@bhhaskin Not that weird, #XMPP is harder to set up and use, nobody wants to have to fiddle around with a messaging program trying to get it to work. And if you want real privacy that's even more hassle. It's like the difference between running Windows or MacOS and running something like Slackware Linux. If you're not a true geek devoted to making it work, you probably won't have a good time with XMPP, partly because the documentation is horrible. With #Signal, you pretty much just install the app and register and it works. Even if you don't want your cell phone number associated with your Signal account, it's still easier to set up that XMPP in my experience.

But also, if you truly want privacy with XMPP you have to run your own server, and that's fine for communicating with people on your local network (once you get it working) but how do you connect to your server from say your phone? Now you have to open ports and do all kinds of other nerdy stuff and there is a good chance you will accidentally leave an insecure opening into your system or network. And yes, a true Linux geek might perhaps welcome that challenge, but most normal users just want the damn thing to work with as little thought or effort as possible. And that's not what you're going to get with XMPP. I don't disagree that XMPP is arguably better, but where are the easy to follow setup videos? Where is the single page of documentation that will let you get everything up and running in under five or ten minutes? Maybe you are nerdy enough to deal with XMPP, but it's not real likely all your friends and family will be.

And if your response is that you can use some third-party XMPP server and just run an XMPP client like Gajim, first of all you have no idea how secure that server really is, and second, if they require payment, that's a non-starter because #Signal (and similar apps) are free. And also how do you know that a third-party XMPP server won't just disappear one day, perhaps when you need them most?

And yes, you do need a phone number with Signal (which is the one thing I really detest about several of that type of services) but it does not need to be your personal cell phone number, if you search the Internet there are workarounds for that. And yes, that does make Signal a bit more of a hassle to set up, but not the major headache of dealing with XMPP.

@AdrianVovk @risottobias I get SO tired of having to explain this over and over again, but if you "tell the monitor to turn off" and then stop sending an image, some displays (including mine) apparently don't understand the command to turn off, and then when it "stops sending an image" it interprets that as a failure that it needs to notify the user about, which a big notice on the display that the signal has been lost or words to that effect.

Many people use repurposed small TV sets as displays because (in some parts of the world at least) they are significantly less expensive and more readily available than "computer monitors". TV's are built with the assumption that if you switch to an HDMI input there will be something there sending a HDMI signal, but maybe you forgot to turn that device on, so it notifies you with a big box informing you it's not getting a signal. I hope you are not going to say that the Gnome developers never anticipated that anyone would ever use a small TV as a display!

Also I don't want or need a lock screen, and don't want my wallpaper (blurred or not) and clock displayed, I want to be able to select the image that appears.

As for your ideas about screensavers, the thing I would like to know is this. Apparently Gnome has some built-in mechanism to detect when the keyboard or mouse have not been used in a while, otherwise the power management setting that lets you black the screen after a period of inactivity would not work. Is that information about recent activity of the mouse and keyboard available in any other way, that might be accessed by a script of some kind (for example in a bash script)? Because if that information could be accessed, in theory you could start some kind of program that would display an image (or even play a video) fullscreen, then when activity resumes you could just kill that process (that is displaying the image or playing the video). I am not a programmer but it doesn't seem like that would be a complicated script to create IF the information about keyboard and mouse activity is available through some mechanism.

As for the Gnome philosophy, that's a double-edged sword. It's probably a big part of why Gnome seems more stable than KDE (at least on some hardware) but at the same time absolutely NO ONE likes it when a feature they have come to rely on just disappears because the developers have decided it's not well maintained enough for their tastes. This is one of the big reasons some users are fleeing MacOS - every time Apple releases a new version of MacOS, things that used to work just great stop working. MacOS has been in a slow decline for at least a decade now and many Apple desktop users are starting to wonder why they are paying exorbitant prices for Apple hardware, just to get software that is less and less capable with each new iteration. I really hope Gnome is not falling into that trap. If code is ancient but still works fine and causes no problems, it should not be arbitrarily removed, that is exactly the sort of thing that infuriates users. Knowing that would make me LESS likely to choose a Gnome-based distro the next time I upgrade.

@AdrianVovk @risottobias I say it has to keep sending an image to the display because if it doesn't, the display complains that there is no HDMI input. If the screen would truly stay black it would not be a problem, although I can see the value in being notified if a HDMI cable becomes disconnected or something like that happens.

This is why I have tried to frame my request as a desire to display an image during a period of inactivity, rather than simply asking for a screensaver. The fact is I have been trying to find an answer to this for a while, and I have read several comments from other people who have been disappointed (or even in a few cases angry) that screensavers were removed from Gnome/Wayland. If Ubuntu were still running X (or X11 or Xorg or whatever the proper name is) then there apparently are utilities you can use to make a screensaver, but they don't work in #Wayland and therefore not in modern versions of #Ubuntu (or most other modern #Linux distros).

The funny/sad thing is that in trying to find an answer I have read a lot of people who said the switched from #Gnome to #KDE just because of issues like this. Apparently people are getting sick of the "my way or the highway" mentality of the Gnome developers, and that is also one of the big reasons there is so much interest in the #Cosmic desktop. People like the idea of Cosmic in part because they don't try to make it look like Windows, and more importantly, it's not Gnome. I suspect that Ubuntu and Gnome are both dragging each other down by making choices that are increasingly unpopular with users. I have no idea if the Cosmic desktop will give you a way to have "screensaver" functionality but that's not the point, the point is that the Gnome project is taking away a lot of the "freedom" that some #Linux users so value.

Now please keep in mind that I am saying the above because of comments I have read while trying to find a solution for my issue. I will also note that in my opinion certain Gnome-related online communities seem rather toxic, and if that's not just my imagination then that's not helping them either. In my opinion the only thing that stops KDE (or #Cinnamon for that matter) from perhaps being THE preferred desktop environment for the majority of Linux distros is that they insist on trying to make it look too much like Windows, and in KDE's case it still has a few too many unresolved bugs (although not everyone seems to encounter those, which makes me think KDE has better support for certain kinds of hardware than others).

As an aside, I also get the appeal of switching to Wayland, but at the same time there are a lot of X/X11/Xorg related utilities that still need to be ported over, at least from what I have been reading. However I get the impressing that the lack of "screensavers" is not a Wayland limitation per se, because KDE still has them apparently. So the blame for that lies squarely on the shoulders of the Gnome developers, who (from what I have read) don't seem to much care what anyone outside their small group might want or need. I am just a user, I don't follow Gnome politics, but as I said I have read many comments where the Gnome developers were not exactly held in high regard. This is not to say Gnome is bad, it has a lot of things going for it, but being responsive to users' needs doesn't appear to be one of those things.

@risottobias I agree with you. All I really want is a simple way to display an image (NOT put my computer to sleep pr into hibernation) if there is no activity for two or three minutes, until I touch a key or move the mouse. But it has to continue to send a signal to my display during that period, hence the desire to display an image. In researching this I discovered that this is called a "screensaver" and the #Gnome developers don't like them for some reason, so when you ask about such a thing you get told to just turn off the display using its power button (which is NOT the functionality I am seeking). I HATE being told I don't need what I asked for, and that I should just use some inferior solution.

If #PopOS and the #Cosmic desktop are half as good as they are aiming for whenever they finally make an actual release, I am switching over and the Gnome developers and their precious DE can rot as far as I am concerned.

@chikim I just wanted to pass along a bit of information you may find interesting given your previous comment about accessibility in Linux, and that is that I was watching a video last night about #PopOS and the #Cosmic desktop, which right now is still in alpha, and that is that they specifically said that accessibility was one of their goals. I would wait until it is out of alpha and beta (probably sometime in early 2025) before giving it a try, if you have any interest in Linux at that point, because I don't think the accessibility features have been implemented yet. But if you do have any interest you might want to wait for the release version and check it out, or at least ask around and see if it's any more compatible with screen readers than the current Linux distros.

In fact if you were so motivated, maybe there is a way you could contact the PopOS developers and volunteer to help test their accessibility features. But you would probably only want to do that if you had any interest in using Linux, and I kind of got the impression you don't, at least not yet. But I still wanted to let you know that there's some hope accessibility in Linux will improve.

@chikim This is the sad reality of #MacOS - with every new version you get the unwelcome surprise of random features in Apple's software that used to work great, but are now broken. It's part of the reason I finally switched to #Linux, which although far from perfect, doesn't tend to give you those kinds of headaches. Plus I got sick of updates that took well over an hour to install, granted my Mac Mini was getting a bit long in the tooth but if I wanted to I could put Linux on that, and I am sure that updates would be much faster. Even installing Linux from scratch takes far less time than installing MacOS!