[Idea/Request] Wine integration with .scr screensavers

[CHJ85]

HI there. I've been thinking about this idea for awhile now, and I think it'd be a cool addition to mate-screensavers. For nostalgic purposes, I've set up a script to use a Windows screensaver through Wine rather than the default ones that come by default.

FYI, I used this guide to set it up, if interested: https://joefreeman.weebly.com/using-windows-sreensavers-on-linux.html

Anyway. I thought it'd be a cool idea to have this built into mate-screensaver as an optional feature. That way − if you add an .scr file to mate-screensaver, the app will automatically recognize that this is a Windows screensaver and execute it through Wne. Or if Wine is not installed, it'll tell you that the screensaver requires Wine to be installed in order for it to work. And then ask if you'd like to install Wine. Once Wine is installed, mate-screensaver will support Windows screensavers just as if they were native Linux screensavers.

[lukefromdc]

A negative of this is that when Windows exeutables become executable via WINE, a skilled attacker could use this to run Windows payloads after the usual cross-platform browser exploits.

WINE can be quite useful but installing it just to run a screensaver strikes me as a trivia reason to significantly increase the attack surface. On the other hand, an attempt to execute a Windows malware payload directly w/o knowing to call WINE should still fail.

[CHJ85]

@lukefromdc I've never had that issue. But if this is a concern, setting up an sandboxed wine bottle for mate-screensaver with only the requirements needed to run the screensaver and with no http access, should take care of that risk. Idk. I just thought it'd be a fun addition to Mate. Albeit a niche use case and kinda geeky. But fun nonetheless.

[lukefromdc]

I just don't see this happening. Mate-screensaver cannot depend on WINE, no other DE does and remember that toplevel mate metapackages usually depend on mate-screensaver. That means if it is a build time option no distro will be likely to use it, limiting it's use to those who build MATE locally.

WINE often breaks on rolling release distros or at least used to. Yet another issue is that we would be unable to include any .scr file distributed under a closed license or in fact ANY license incompatable with the GPL. At a minimum making this part of MATE would start controversies that would be bad for our reputation. The trash talk would flow everywhere from Phoronix to Twitter to Mastodon.

[CHJ85]

I'm not saying it should depend on Wine. But rather as an optional feature for those that wish to use a .scr Windows screensaver as those tend to bring back nostalgia.

[lukefromdc]

That would be hard to do without linking to WINE at build time. A runtime check would be complex, someone else would have to code that as we are a small team