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

[Gaffer.]

Hi Robin,

On Thursday 05 February 2009 08:33, Robin Pedersen wrote:
> > As Anne said: in addition to this software control, if you have an
> > Energy Star motherboard, it is possible that the BIOS settings are
> > also configured to blank the screen or to put the monitor into
> > sleep mode.
> >
> > So, if you have turned off the screen saver and disabled Display
> > Power Management and the screen still goes blank, you will need to
> > change your BIOS settings.

Unfortunately not all bios implementations are equal !  I note that you 
referred to a laptop.  Simply because laptops are power conscious 
devices there may be components in its bios that are just not made 
available to be adjusted.  APIC/ACPI along with the various buggy 
implementations of those have long caused problems of various kinds.

Bearing in mind that the components of the operating system have to try 
and work with these built in power management functions its not 
surprising that its difficult to override them.

It might be interesting to boot from a plain vanilla DOS floppy and note 
if the display still blanks.  I checked this out on an Esystems laptop 
this afternoon and the display goes blank after 10 minutes.  There is 
nowhere in the bios to adjust that prevents this.

-- 
Best Regards:
             Derrick.