disabling the screensaver

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nomko

disabling the screensaver

Post by nomko »

Hi,

I noticed this weird "bug" under Mint 71 Mate (and on my other machine running Mint 13 Mate): the screensaver kicks in after a few minutes without any reason. When i'm watching a movie with Vlc under Mint 17 Mate, the screensaver turns the screen to black after a couple of minutes. I've set the screensaver time even to 2 hours and still it kicks in after a few minutes. Very, very annoying! With my system running Mint 13 it onl;y happens when i watch embedded movies in websites or Youtube.

My question is: how to disable the Mate screensaver for hood? Just to inform you: I've uninstalled the screensaver on my Mint 17 system without any success...
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
Adelante

Re: disabling the screensaver

Post by Adelante »

These screensavers and lock screens really are getting obnoxious. I don't have LM17 Mate, but on two other distros based on 14.04, I finally installed xscreensaver, disabled it, logged out, logged in. That overruled the Gnome screensaver somehow and I've since been able to watch movies in peace. I don't know if it will help on Mate at all, but it might be worth a try.
nomko

Re: disabling the screensaver

Post by nomko »

@ Adelante :
I'll give your solution a try. Hopefully it works on Mint 17.

It really is very annoying and obnoxious that it has to work that way. If the developers want to correct this problem, please let them do so! With this 5-year supported Mint 17/LTS version they surely must have more time to fix this issue ;)
nomko

Re: disabling the screensaver

Post by nomko »

Adelante wrote:These screensavers and lock screens really are getting obnoxious. I don't have LM17 Mate, but on two other distros based on 14.04, I finally installed xscreensaver, disabled it, logged out, logged in. That overruled the Gnome screensaver somehow and I've since been able to watch movies in peace. I don't know if it will help on Mate at all, but it might be worth a try.
Nope, didn't worked!

I also noticed that under Mint 16 Mate (32-bit) this issue doesn't exist when watching movies under Vlc, only when watching movies in a webbrowser/Youtube. I don't know about the 64-bit version of Mint 16 Mate, but with Mint 17 Mate it is present.

Mint 16 uses Vlc 2.0.8
Mint 17 uses Vlc 2.1.4

Any difference in this?
Last edited by nomko on Wed Jul 02, 2014 5:14 am, edited 1 time in total.
woodsman

Re: disabling the screensaver

Post by woodsman »

Try disabling this option: 'Activate screen saver when computer is idle'.

Video apps should be smart enough to override screen savers. VLC should have such an option if not automatic.
nomko

Re: disabling the screensaver

Post by nomko »

Try disabling this option: 'Activate screen saver when computer is idle'.
This option i always disable after doing a new/fresh/clean install. No effect at all.
Video apps should be smart enough to override screen savers. VLC should have such an option if not automatic.
I checked that and the option to disable the screensaver is enabled. No effect at all.
xana40

Re: disabling the screensaver

Post by xana40 »

Can I get someone to re-visit this question. I Installed Linux Mint 17 about a month ago on my desktop computer. One of the first things I do is disable the screensaver and power management set to never. It seemed to be working as expected until last week. Now, after about 5 to 10 minutes of inactivity, it blanks the display. I've tested this and it is not the Mate screensaver app since no screensaver is actually displayed. From what I've read, it is xorg that sees the system at startup and configures itself as the power manager. When I run xset -q , this is the result:
Keyboard Control:
auto repeat: on key click percent: 0 LED mask: 00000002
XKB indicators:
00: Caps Lock: off 01: Num Lock: on 02: Scroll Lock: off
03: Compose: off 04: Kana: off 05: Sleep: off
06: Suspend: off 07: Mute: off 08: Misc: off
09: Mail: off 10: Charging: off 11: Shift Lock: off
12: Group 2: off 13: Mouse Keys: off
auto repeat delay: 500 repeat rate: 30
auto repeating keys: 00ffffffdffffbbf
fadfffefffedffff
9fffffffffffffff
fff7ffffffffffff
bell percent: 50 bell pitch: 400 bell duration: 100
Pointer Control:
acceleration: 2/1 threshold: 4
Screen Saver:
prefer blanking: yes allow exposures: yes
timeout: 0 cycle: 0
Colors:
default colormap: 0x20 BlackPixel: 0x0 WhitePixel: 0xffffff
Font Path:
/usr/share/fonts/X11/misc,/usr/share/fonts/X11/Type1,built-ins
DPMS (Energy Star):
Standby: 600 Suspend: 600 Off: 600
DPMS is Enable

So it seems to have configured itself since the xorg.conf file doesn't exist in the etc/x11 folder and it's auto setting at startup.
I really like the Mate desktop, so I was thinking about re-installing Mate or maybe installing Cinnamon alongside just to test if xorg configs itself differently.

Any suggestions? thanks

btw... I haven't tried installing the xscreensaver yet. Just weighing the options before messing things up more :(
Darcy

Re: disabling the screensaver

Post by Darcy »

You could turn them off manually by typing the following into terminal

Code: Select all

xset -dpms;xset s off
If that works than you need to add it to a file that executes on each start up (not sure which one).
xana40

Re: disabling the screensaver

Post by xana40 »

ok, I confirmed that the command line (xset -dpms;xset s off) does turn off the screen blanking temporarily. So I'm looking for a more permanent solution at startup. I found instructions at... http://askubuntu.com/questions/61291/ho ... mmand-line
It involves creating 2 text files in the etc/xdg/autostart folder. I don't see any harm in trying this solution. If someone could look it over and give me any input about how this will affect the system, that would be great. I'm headed out to work so won't be trying this out until tomorrow anyway. Thanks
malinoy

Re: disabling the screensaver

Post by malinoy »

One option is to edit the vlc.desktop file in the /usr/share/applications folder.

Replace the original command
Exec=/usr/bin/vlc –started-from-file %U

with the following line:
Exec=sh -c “xscreensaver-command -exit; /usr/bin/vlc –started-from-file %U; xscreensaver -nosplash”
tarverator

Re: disabling the screensaver

Post by tarverator »

What would the relevant line in vlc.desktop be for mate-screensaver, rather than xscreensaver?
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