Comment 20 for bug 5823

Got it working. What's I missed before was that the executable in electricsheep.desktop has to be in /usr/lib/gnome-screensaver/gnome-screensaver/. When drawing on the root window you don't need XLIB_SKIP_ARGB_VISUALS=1

cat /usr/lib/gnome-screensaver/gnome-screensaver/esheep.sh
#!/bin/sh
electricsheep --root 1 --max-megabytes 3000 --zoom 1 --display-anim 1 --show-errors 0 --nrepeats 2 --frame-rate 30

cat /usr/share/gnome-screensaver/themes/electricsheep.desktop
[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=ElectricSheep
Comment=Electric Sheep is a distributed screen-saver that harnesses idle computers into a render farm with the purpose of animating and evolving artificial life-forms. This module requires a high-bandwidth, always-on connection to the internet such as DSL or cable-modem. The first time you run it, it normally takes 5 to 10 minutes before the first sheep is downloaded and displayed. After that, it should come up immediately. If you have installed the hacked xscreensaver that supports passing key-presses onto the graphics hack and this feature is enabled, then pressing the up arrow-key transmits a vote for the currently displayed sheep to the server. The votes are the basis of a fitness function for an evolutionary algorithm on the sheep genomes. Vote for the sheep you like, and they will mate, reproduce, and evolve! See http://electricsheep.org for more information. This is version 2.6.4.
TryExec=esheep.sh
Exec="esheep.sh"
StartupNotify=false
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=Screensaver