gnome-screensaver-preferences missing

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

Which screensaver to use (gnome-screensaver or xscreensaver) should configured via /etc/alternatives/screensaver Also the System Settings / Brightness and Lock should over a way to choose which one to use and offer a button to open xscreensaver settings when that screensaver is active.

@Pander
What you said, was it a proposal or a description of current situation?

@Ivan: What preferences are you looking for?

@Marc Deslauriers
There was a tool called gnome-screensaver-preferences that allowed to configure several gnome-screensaver parameters:
* choose screensaver
* tune screensaver
* set screensaver timeout
* choose whether to lock system or not
Screenshot: http://www.insidesocal.com/click/2009_1209_gnome_screensaver_preferences.png

This tool was part of gnome-screensaver package and it was there at least untill Natty. Now it's missing. I think that it's wrong.

Ah, yes, uptream Gnome has removed the screensaver functionality.
See: https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-shell-list/2011-March/msg00340.html

That's ... nice.
xscreensaver's author once said that he won't ever implement features I listed in bug description. Gnome developers decided to destroy their implementation. Sometimes innovation is a thing to hate.
I can suggest Ubuntu developers to ship old version of gnome-screensaver with different name, but it's way to nowhere.

The old version is gtk2, we need a gtk3 version.
If someone would forward port all the screensavers to the new gtk3 version, we'd consider it.

I posted some details on this in a comment at http://askubuntu.com/questions/59577/replace-xscreensaver-with-gnome-screensaver-xubuntu before finding this.

The article details on how to deal with it in 11.10 and how the solution doesn't work (because gnome-screensaver-preferences is missing) in 12.04.

It would seem that a fix for 12.04, which is an LTS after all, would be easy and worth doing. I'd do it (port the gnome-screensaver-preferences script) myself but I'd have to learn enough python first; I wish I had time for that.

My comment gets you to where gnome-screensaver is at least running and locking the screen off the user submenu (top right).
You'll just have a blank screen with the date and time in small chars at the top; press any key to get the login dialogue.

There is a citation link to this page in the comment.

Confirmed in Ubuntu GNOME 13.10

Hi,

What can be done without gnome-screensaver-preferences ?

Can this bug still be reproduced with 16.04 and/or 16.10? If so, what can be done upstream by GNOME and/or Ubuntu? What are urls to upstream bugs in GNOME?