Text only screensaver with quotes/proverbs or anything you like.

OS: Debian

WM: LXDE

Issue:

I wanted to learn something from my screensaver.

Research / Options:

I thought on scripts to download nice wallpapers/images with quotes using google results or webs with tons of them.

After some analysis, I realized that it was difficult to select the content on the quotes and that many were not what I wanted to see.

If the results would have been good, the option to display random pictures from a folder would have done the job.

Then I searched for how to display text into the prebuilt screensavers. Couldn't find one that accepted text.

Messing around I found that I could select a screensaver that was "not installed" and go to the advance options and do whatever I wanted.

Solution:

On an unexisting screensaver I added a command as the source of the text to display.

Initially it was just fortune, but then I created a script with this


# echo ""
# echo ""
# echo ""
# echo ""
# fortune | cowsay

If you put multiple commands on that option of the screensaver it doesn't work well, that's why I put them all on a script and just call that single script.

I hope it helps someone.