The awful thing about getting it right the first time

Worthwhile long version rant: http://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/toolkits.html

Nice thing about Crunchbang...they seem to skip installing broken/mutant versions of tools that Just Work (tm).

I'm perpetually dumbfounded at the direction that Ubuntu seems to be taking.

Who else has absolutely no idea what this is about?

Long story short:

JWZ created XScreensaver back in the day, using raw Xlib.

He did this because he did not trust the security of larger toolkits/programs--a screen locker must be so simple that it can't go wrong, and none of the larger libraries is auditable/verifiable in that respect. If it crashes, somebody gets access to your desktop.

Every five years or so, some group in the *nix community decides that they know better than Grandpa Zawinski, and they reinvent XScreensaver--however, they usually do so poorly, and insecurely.