FAQ
Updated 2-10-2001

Why isn't Cosmos part of the XScreenSaver distribution?

Cosmos is written in C++ and uses some STL. There are far more C programmers in the world than C++ and adding cosmos to the XScreenSaver base package would have required several additional dependencies, many of which might not be on the users machine, and if they were, may be incompatable anyway. In the future maybe, right now, no.

Ok, I got the binary, now what?

Copy the binary to the XScreenSaver directory. Try '/usr/X11R6/lib/screensaver' or one of it's variants. Binary rpm(s) coming soon.

How do I make it use color xxxx.

You don't. Yet. Currently it cycles through all colors (well, not all, 400) which we thought looked much cooler than one boring old color. But, we'll add it to the list.

This runs like sh*t on my 486.

Sorry, but Cosmos *is* a CPU hog. The "burn" effect is expensive as every pixel is drawn every frame. We have some ideas to optimize it more and are looking at it. Until then there are several other very good, less expensive, hacks to run.