Why does every distribution upgrade remove xscreensaver?

[Adam Funk]

On 2013-05-22, Colin Law wrote:

> On 22 May 2013 11:23, Adam Funk <a24061 at ducksburg.com> wrote:
>> I've been using xscreensaver for a few years, especially since the
>> gnome-screensaver went all boring.  Every distribution upgrade on
>> several machines for the past 2 (at least, but I think more) times has
>> removed xscreensaver even though it was manually installed, so I have
>> to reinstall it after the upgrade.  Is there any good reason for that?
>> Any way to prevent it?
>
> I can't be certain but I seem to remember that there is an issue with
> compatibility with gnome-screensaver, which is installed by default.
> Does installing xscreensaver uninstall the gnome one?  If so then
> perhaps it is not possibly to keep it installed over an upgrade.
> Something like that anyway.

A quick check of dpkg shows that my machines have xscreensaver but not
gnome-screensaver --- although I don't recall removing the latter.  So
gnome-screensaver must not be required by anything else I have.  (I
have GNOME 3 installed as well as "classic", which I actually use.)

ISTR at some point switching gnome-screensaver off in the user
start-up applications, but I can't remember when.  The package
descriptions for xscreensaver & gnome-screensaver don't show any
explicit conflicts between the two.