Update available! This version is very old.
Xscreensaver has apparently been checking for updates and is disappointed that it hasn’t had one for 14 months because Debian is too stable. Can anyone recommend a linux screensaver which would work with xfce and can be trusted to never do that?
Wait? Your xscreensaver is checking for updates / new versions? AFAIK it’s not supposed to do that. … or did you just try to phrase this cynical and it was your package management?
I know, it’s hard to believe. The confidence with which it announced that an update is available suggests that the actual screensaver was checking for updates on its own. So far as the system package manager is concerned there isn’t one.
I gotta take a look if that’s just your old version or every version is doing this. I mean what’s next? Sending emails? Push requests? Self updating? If so, it’s maybe time for a fork. But maybe it’s also a compile time option.
As it turns out, it’s just printing that message if more than 510 days have passed since the timestamp in version.h was updated, which it wasn’t when the debian maintainers last applied a patch. So I guess it is taken as given that the program will forever continue to need updates that frequently and that those updates will be forthcoming.
Anyway, in keeping with the author’s wishes I’ll just use xfce4-screensaver instead. It seems fine.
Nice for the paranoid people, but this means false errors when there simply are no updates.
wow. thank you for checking