[ubuntu-studio-devel] xfce4-screensaver

[Erich Eickmeyer]

Hi Ross,

On Sun, Mar 10, 2019 at 8:17 AM, Ross Gammon <rosco at ubuntustudio.org> 
wrote:
> Hi Erich,
> 
> On 3/10/19 12:43 AM, Erich Eickmeyer wrote:
>>  Hi all,
>> 
>>  Sean Davis (bluesabre) did an amazing job and ported 
>> mate-screensaver to
>>  xfce4-screensaver. The motivation, as I understand it, is because
>>  light-locker is largely unmaintained and causes a race condition 
>> when
>>  resuming from sleep due to the vt change (or something like that, we
>>  don't need to get too technical on this).
>> 
>>  With that, light-locker and xscreensaver are being largely 
>> depricated by
>>  the Xubuntu team (who can correct me if I'm wrong... well, anybody 
>> can
>>  correct me) in favor of xfce4-screensaver. I think this change, if 
>> it
>>  needs to happen in our seeds, needs to happen.
>> 
>>  If you want to test it first, that's good practice. That said, I 
>> can say
>>  from personal experience that I have experienced the light-locker 
>> race
>>  condition myself, and it's definitely not a good bug to have.
>> 
>>  Anyhow, we don't need to make this change immediately. Our priority
>>  right now is the Developer Membership Board meeting happening on 
>> Monday
>>  at 1500 UTC (I may have posted that this was at 1200 UTC, that was a
>>  mistake) for mine and Ross's applications for Per-Package Uploader
>>  permissions. My application, I expect, will be rejected due to lack 
>> of
>>  experience, so I'm in it mostly for the feedback. However, we're 
>> hoping
>>  for success with Ross's application, which is getting a lot of 
>> support
>>  at present.
>> 
>>  With that, I want to say that this change in the seed, if necessary,
>>  isn't as high of a priority, but it would bring some good bug fixes 
>> to
>>  our default Xfce desktop.
> 
> The last time we discussed screensavers was quite a while ago when Kai
> was still in charge and we decided to remove our Ubuntu Studio
> screensaver package becasue it was broken and we didn't have it in the
> seeds anyway.
> 
> There was some discussion about the use of screensavers in general and
> it was decided that in the days of flatscreens the original purpose 
> has
> disappeared, and the fact that in audio and video we might want to 
> watch
> some rendering/mastering chuntering along for quite a while, that
> screensavers did not make much sense. I think the power management
> settings would need to be fiddled with to get the screensaver to work
> instead of blanking.
> 
> But I suppose we could test it as a replacement for light-locker and 
> see
> how it goes with audio/video work. I have not had a computer with a
> screen saver for so many years (at work or at home), I have forgotten
> what it is like :-)
> 
> Ross
> 

I completely agree that with LCD screens the reason for screensavers 
(burn-in) has largely been removed. That said, this is more about 
screen locking than for the screensavers themselves. Unfortunately, 
with light-locker unmaintained and causing resume-from-sleep issues 
(that I have experienced, and apparently I'm not the only one), this is 
something that needs to happen. I'm working with the Xubuntu team on 
this one, since our setup largely needs to reflect theirs in terms of 
defaults since we're using their DE.


Thanks,
Erich