Allow me to make a broad generalization. Windows screensavers are usually pretty lame. Lame to the point I often set my screen to turn off instead. Great for saving energy but it’s more form over function. For a long time I yearned for a windows port of xscreensaver. For the people not in the know, it’s a pack of some of the slickest screen savers out there. Those in the know are aware that the guy that makes it is passionately against Microsoft. Until recently it was Unix based systems only. He recently ported it over to Mac. He’s making a point of excluding windows. It’s too bad, I get that he’s got a grudge against Microsoft, but why screw the users?

Now I will say I’ve come across some nice openGL screen savers. I’ve been using a batch I found for a while. I’ve got a suspicion that my favourites were ported off the Mac. Poor windows, with the exception of that 3d fish one the screensavers are brutal.

Here’s where I get excited!

Some kind soul ported some of them over to windows. I will say a few of my favourites are missing but I imagine that’s because of X specific calls that aren’t easily emulated in windows. A shame really but I’ll take what I can get. One to look out for that is included is substrate. I could look at that for days.

With luck I hope to move to a FreeBSD system soon so I won’t have to worry about it too much longer. In any case it works with windows XPSP2 That much is personally confirmed.

The original XScreensaver

The nifty Mac looking ones

The WinXScreensaver