[kde-linux] Why is it so difficult to disable a screensaver?

[Robin Pedersen]

Have you ever tried to disable the screensaver on your linux box, to have  
the screen powered on at all times?

It seems like all software that provides some kind of  
screensaver/powersaving features come with these turned on by default. Why  
is this? When I have my laptop powered on, and the screen is open, I'm  
looking at it. I don't want it to turn black after a short while. When I'm  
not looking at it, I close it. While this is pretty annoying when I'm  
using my laptop, it's really a problem in other situations, like in  
virtual machines or with remote desktop connections, during a presentation  
and so on.

In other situations, it might even represent a security risk. Say I'm  
about to leave my office for a while. I take a look at my computer. If  
there's nothing on the screen, I assume either it's locked, I'm not logged  
in, or it's completely turned off. If the screen is automatically blank  
after a couple of minutes, I typically forget to lock it properly.

OK, I can explicitly enable a screensaver and configure it to require a  
password, but the point is that I just want to have the screen on at all  
times, unless I manually lock it.

As you might have guessed already, disabling the KDE screensaver doesn't  
do the trick. On a standard KDE setup using someting like Linux and Xorg,  
the screen will still automatically turn blank after a (rather short)  
while.

Since disabling the screensaver is not enough, I've looked up all possible  
settings in KDE that has to do with power saving. These settings vary  
between KDE versions and configurations, and I can't remember exactly  
where to find them now, but IIRC there are several "power schemes" that  
are configured separately. Of course, they all default to having screen  
powersaving features enabled.

However, disabling all kinds of screensaving features in KDE is not  
enough. In addition `man xorg.conf` will tell you that there are at least  
four settings that are all enabled by default, that needs to be turned off.

    Section "ServerFlags"
        Option "BlankTime"  "time"         # Default: 10 minutes.
        Option "StandbyTime"  "time"       # Default: 20 minutes.
        Option "SuspendTime"  "time"       # Default: 30 minutes.
        Option "OffTime"  "time"           # Default: 40 minutes.
     EndSection

So I set these all to "0", and I was happy for a while, only to discover  
recently that my laptop still blacks out every now and then. Now I don't  
know what's going on. I suspect it might be something in the lower parts  
of the system, like a kernel module. (BTW, I have Arch Linux).

So the question is why are every single powersaving feature enabled by  
default? Who would ever need more than one program that automatically  
turns off the monitor?

If all these features was disabled by default, it would be easy to enable  
one of them in the rare situations where you actually need a screensaver,  
but it seems to be impossible to turn them all off. I have turned off  
something like 10 settings that enabled screensavers by default, and it  
still doesn't work. Even on windows, you only need to disable two  
screensavers (interrestingly if you select the power scheme called "Always  
on", the monitor is still set to turn off after 20 minutes, so you have to  
do it manually, but it actually works).

IMHO, when a new user finds the screensaver settings in systemsettings,  
and turns it off, and the screen still blanks out after a while, it's a  
bug. It may not be a KDE bug, but it may still be possible to handle by  
KDE in some way. Like providing a way to turn off those other powersaving  
features in the system.

-- 
Robin Pedersen