How To Install xscreensaver-gl on Ubuntu

Posted on April 1, 2023 (Last modified on May 20, 2023 )

3 minutes • 478 words

Introduction

In this tutorial we learn how to install xscreensaver-gl on Ubuntu.

What is `xscreensaver-gl`

xscreensaver-gl is:

XScreenSaver is a modular screen saver and locker for X11, containing more than 200 screen savers.

This package contains a small selection of 3D (OpenGL) screen saver modules from the xscreensaver collection. This package can be used by xscreensaver and also some other screensaver engines.

This is the set of GL screensavers shipped by default: antinspect, antspotlight, atunnel, beats, blinkbox, bubble3d, circuit, cityring, covid19, crumbler, cubestack, cubestorm, cubetwist, discoball, dymaxionmap, endgame, energystream, engine, esper, etruscanvenus, flipflop, flipscreen3d, flyingtoasters, gears, geodesic, geodesicgears, gflux, gibson, glblur, glcells, gleidescope, glknots, glmatrix, glschool, glslideshow, glsnake, gltext, headroom, hexstrut, hydrostat, hypertorus, jigglypuff, kaleidocycle, lavalite, lockward, maze3d, mirrorblob, moebius, moebiusgears, molecule, morph3d, peepers, pipes, polyhedra, polytopes, projectiveplane, pulsar, quasicrystal, queens, raverhoop, razzledazzle, romanboy, sierpinski3d, sonar, sphereeversion, spheremonics, splitflap, splodesic, stonerview, superquadrics, topblock, unicrud, vigilance, voronoi, winduprobot.

More display modes can be found in the xscreensaver-data, xscreensaver-data-extra and xscreensaver-gl-extra packages.

There are three methods to install xscreensaver-gl on Ubuntu. We can use apt-get, apt and aptitude. In the following sections we will describe each method. You can choose one of them.

Install xscreensaver-gl Using apt-get

Update apt database with apt-get using the following command.

sudo apt-get update

After updating apt database, We can install xscreensaver-gl using apt-get by running the following command:

sudo apt-get -y install xscreensaver-gl

Install xscreensaver-gl Using apt

Update apt database with apt using the following command.

sudo apt update

After updating apt database, We can install xscreensaver-gl using apt by running the following command:

sudo apt -y install xscreensaver-gl

Install xscreensaver-gl Using aptitude

If you want to follow this method, you might need to install aptitude first since aptitude is usually not installed by default on Ubuntu. Update apt database with aptitude using the following command.

sudo aptitude update

After updating apt database, We can install xscreensaver-gl using aptitude by running the following command:

sudo aptitude -y install xscreensaver-gl

How To Uninstall xscreensaver-gl on Ubuntu

To uninstall only the xscreensaver-gl package we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get remove xscreensaver-gl

Uninstall xscreensaver-gl And Its Dependencies

To uninstall xscreensaver-gl and its dependencies that are no longer needed by Ubuntu, we can use the command below:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove xscreensaver-gl

Remove xscreensaver-gl Configurations and Data

To remove xscreensaver-gl configuration and data from Ubuntu we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get -y purge xscreensaver-gl

Remove xscreensaver-gl configuration, data, and all of its dependencies

We can use the following command to remove xscreensaver-gl configurations, data and all of its dependencies, we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove --purge xscreensaver-gl

Dependencies

xscreensaver-gl have the following dependencies:

References

xscreensaver-gl website

Summary

In this tutorial we learn how to install xscreensaver-gl package on Ubuntu using different package management tools: apt, apt-get and aptitude.