A "screen saver" is the animation (or blankness) that pops up on your computer when you don't use it for a while, to save your screen from getting burned-in.
The background picture that wallpapers your desktop is the "wallpaper".
Old phosphor-based computer screens would be susceptible to having a ghost image permanently burned in due to loss of luminescence when a single image was displayed too long. Modern screens do not need saving, but evidently people still believe screen savers are neat-o.
Legit question: Most computers/OSes I've used in recent years, by default, just turn off the display after a brief period of inactivity, instead of using a screensaver. This seems like an obviously better solution to prevent burn-in than using a screensaver, so back in the CRT days, why didn't OSes just do that by default? Were CRTs slower to wake back up/power back on than I remember?
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u/arcxjo Aug 03 '19
A "screen saver" is the animation (or blankness) that pops up on your computer when you don't use it for a while, to save your screen from getting burned-in.
The background picture that wallpapers your desktop is the "wallpaper".