Variety is the spice of life and you probably never realized the screensaver buffet had so much of it. That said, XScreenSaver is a Mac (OS X 10.5 Leopard and up) port of the standard screen saver collection shipped on most Linux and Unix systems.

The XScreensaver collection includes modules from and was compiled by Jamie Zawinski, though dozens contributed to the project. Yes, it is very much free and, with 202 modules, it’s a sure bet you will find something you like — Flying Toasters (image above), Pipes, Rorschach, Flames, Fireworks, Pulsar and many score more.

I tried more than 100 of the modules on my 2007 iMac running OS X 10.7.4 and all worked, most well. However, a few did manage to crash the System Preferences app — not an uncommon occurrence when trying out screensavers.

That said, as of this writing, none of the XScreensaver modules I tried were compatible with OS X Mountain Lion DP4.

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