How to totally remove gnome (mate, not sure) screensaver

Support & Help Requests
1

Using UM 16.04…

Hello All, I tried to remove gnome-screensavers with the Terminal. The Terminal says there is no such program installed. I then installed xscreensavers. When I go into System> Preferences> Screensavers
there are two entries of screensavers. One is xscreensavers and one is the gnome or mate screensavers.

The original screensaver is the only one that comes on.

How do I remove the gnome or mate screensaver for good?

Thanks

mt

2

dpkg -l | grep screensaver

then

sudo dpkg --remove <the exact package name>

3

Hello pavlos,

Thanks for the the rapid reply. I’m not sure what the exact package name is that I am to remove… I am far from a geek, and old.

Does anyone know what the name of the screene saver is that comes with Mate?

Thanks

mt

4

the first command will give you a list of packages (my 16.04 lists those)

ii  mate-screensaver                       1.12.0-1                                     amd64        MATE screen saver and locker
ii  mate-screensaver-common                1.12.0-1                                     all          MATE screen saver and locker (common files)

You can remove with
sudo dpkg --remove mate-screensaver mate-screensaver-common

5

I copied your command, because I had the same entries. Here are the results:
materalph@materalph-System-Product-Name:~$ sudo dpkg --remove mate-screensaver mate-screensaver-common
[sudo] password for materalph:
dpkg: dependency problems prevent removal of mate-screensaver:
mate-gnome-main-menu-applet depends on mate-screensaver.
ubuntu-mate-desktop depends on mate-screensaver.
ubuntu-mate-core depends on mate-screensaver.

dpkg: error processing package mate-screensaver (--remove):
dependency problems - not removing
dpkg: dependency problems prevent removal of mate-screensaver-common:
mate-screensaver depends on mate-screensaver-common (= 1.12.0-1).

dpkg: error processing package mate-screensaver-common (--remove):
dependency problems - not removing
Errors were encountered while processing:
mate-screensavermateralph@materalph-System-Product-Name:~$ sudo dpkg --remove mate-screensaver mate-screensaver-common
[sudo] password for materalph:
dpkg: dependency problems prevent removal of mate-screensaver:
mate-gnome-main-menu-applet depends on mate-screensaver.
ubuntu-mate-desktop depends on mate-screensaver.
ubuntu-mate-core depends on mate-screensaver.

dpkg: error processing package mate-screensaver (--remove):
dependency problems - not removing
dpkg: dependency problems prevent removal of mate-screensaver-common:
mate-screensaver depends on mate-screensaver-common (= 1.12.0-1).

dpkg: error processing package mate-screensaver-common (--remove):
dependency problems - not removing
Errors were encountered while processing:
mate-screensaver
mate-screensaver-common
materalph@materalph-System-Product-Name:~$

mate-screensaver-common
materalph@materalph-System-Product-Name:~$

Thanks

mt

6

It looks like there are core dependencies (ubuntu-mate-core, ubuntu-mate-desktop) so you may not be able to remove mate-screensaver. Can’t you just disable screensaver from Control Center | Screensaver (there are 2 buttons, Activate when idle and lock screen)?