Yitz, Both KDE and GNOME ship by default their own screensaver daemons (kscreensaver and gnome-screensaver). I am most familiar with gnome-screensaver so I will use it as the example, but I think kscreensaver does the same. The gnome-screensaver package ships its own desktop file which is active by default. It is not the "desktop environment" which is activating it, it is the desktop file from the screensaver package which makes it start.
We offer the xscreensaver as a substitute, for those who do not like gnome-screensaver for some reason. If they remove the gnome-screensaver package and install xscreensaver instead, they expect xscreensaver to be activated by default. This is also the case. Otherwise it would be considered a security issue that a screensaver package is not active after installation. Users of any other xdg-compliant desktop environment will also expect that xscreensaver is starting if they install it. We expect those who install both packages, to have a special reason for this, because a normal user on the other hand will just use gnome-screensaver which comes with GNOME. The special users will have to choose which one to use in their sessions. I don't know if you fall into any of those categories. Why do you install the xscreensaver package? If you have an elegant solution which caters for all needs, I would be very interested. I don't see why xscreensaver should be more defensive than gnome-screensaver in the both-installed corner case. Maybe the desktop environments (whatever function is sourcing the desktops) should note that two screensavers are installed and only start one of them? -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
