GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 647828
screen: no option 'never'
Last modified: 2013-02-27 10:02:29 UTC
Filed here: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=692037 Description of problem: Sometimes I need to keep the screen on for a longer period of time, though I am not touching the keyboard or mouse - ie. during screen calibration, or just to have something on the screen I need to have at glance. There is no way of preventing screen from blanking. inhibit applet is non existent in Gnome3.
There used to be an inhibit applet in Gnome 2.x - as gnome-shell does not support applets, it would be useful to have an “inhibit” option in the power management icon menu - next to batter and preferences.
I think we probably still support not blanking or locking the screen by modifying the gsettings directly. I think that is probably good enough for now. We should discourage that kind of power usage for the typical cases.
I can't even watch a movie without having to go to my TV (to which the computer is connected) and move the mouse (using VLC which is a very popular cross platform video player). I can imagine a lot of specific usage that would warrant an option for "typical cases". But I read also you mentioned "for now". So can we expect this in 3.2? Thanks.
(In reply to comment #2) > I think we probably still support not blanking or locking the screen by > modifying the gsettings directly. I think that is probably good enough for > now. We should discourage that kind of power usage for the typical cases. default options are just fine to "discourage that kind of power usage for the typical cases" - at the moment I am unable to calibrate my monitor without having to move my mouse every few minutes. on the personal note - that's what I dislike about Gnome 3 - it's tailored for a "typical case" forgetting about many users who are not typical case. default settings are for "typical cases", not restricting way of customising my desktop. a "typical user" won't even bother looking into the "Power management", while some power users would love to have an option, a choice in customising their settings.
(In reply to comment #3) > I can't even watch a movie without having to go to my TV (to which the computer > is connected) and move the mouse (using VLC which is a very popular cross > platform video player). I can imagine a lot of specific usage that would > warrant an option for "typical cases". It's not our fault VLC doesn't integrate in GNOME. Even Mplayer and xine-ui inhibit the screensaver in some way or other (by poking at the screen with fake key events). This doesn't stop VLC implementing it properly using gnome-session's D-Bus API. (In reply to comment #4) > (In reply to comment #2) > > I think we probably still support not blanking or locking the screen by > > modifying the gsettings directly. I think that is probably good enough for > > now. We should discourage that kind of power usage for the typical cases. > > default options are just fine to "discourage that kind of power usage for the > typical cases" - at the moment I am unable to calibrate my monitor without > having to move my mouse every few minutes. The maximum value is 1 hour. I don't see why you would need to move the mouse every few minutes. And if you're talking about colour calibration for your screen, the application you use can also use gnome-session's D-Bus API, just like VLC, to stop the screen from blanking. > on the personal note - that's what I dislike about Gnome 3 - it's tailored for > a "typical case" forgetting about many users who are not typical case. default > settings are for "typical cases", not restricting way of customising my > desktop. a "typical user" won't even bother looking into the "Power > management", while some power users would love to have an option, a choice in > customising their settings. They have a choice, with their screen not blanking for up to an hour. You should stop blaming GNOME for badly integrated applications. Fred can use Totem to watch films without the screensaver coming on, and gnome-color-manager should allow you to colour calibrate your screen without the screensaver coming on (and if it doesn't, I'm sure Richard can reuse the code in totem/lib/totem-scrsaver.* and fix this swiftly).
Good point, I tried with totem and it went fine. VLC does have a few features making worth using it though. I'll file a bug over there then, and in the meantime I'll try to think of other cases where one would need to keep the screen on for more than an hour which is not a workaround of some bugs elsewhere ;-)
https://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/4739
*** Bug 649579 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
So someone 'kindly' replied on the VLC side with the following information: "VLC uses xdg-screensaver from xdg-utils for this." After discussion on #gnome-hacker I was told that the dimming should be prevented by xdg-screensaver and that it could be a GNOME bug then. Comments?
(In reply to comment #9) > So someone 'kindly' replied on the VLC side with the following information: > "VLC uses xdg-screensaver from xdg-utils for this." > > After discussion on #gnome-hacker I was told that the dimming should be > prevented by xdg-screensaver and that it could be a GNOME bug then. xdg-screensaver is a piece of crap. It's not how one should disable the screensaver. In fact, it's been reported many times by gnome-screensaver developers that xdg-screensaver was broken. There's D-Bus APIs to disable the screensaver, which VLC should be using instead of that horror. In the *worst case*, VLC should be poking at the screen, like MPlayer and xine-ui do, using XTest. In any case, GNOME already has a movie player that does work[1], so I'm not prepared to spend time debugging VLC or its use of xdg-screensaver. [1]: Disclaimer, I'm the maintainer of that movie player.
So feedback from the VLC dev is that poking at the X screensaver directly is broken. The interface provided by X is rather limited; when VLC called it, some interferences with some desktop screensaver settings was noticed by a number of users. To make matters worse, a number of users have reported that it is slow as hell causing visible lags in video rendering. So no. xdg-screensaver is capable of using D-Bus. If it does not work, it's either a GNOME bug or an xdg-utils bug. As a side note I am again trying to watch a movie with totem which doesn't open the subtitle file, ask for a plugin which it never finds. Only working choice seems to be VLC. I've now spent quite some times moving comments from one bug tracker to another one to see 2 teams of developers refusing to cooperate to make software work, and another team not wanting to add the "never" option on some "it's not a typical case" basis. Is that what GNOME and Free Software is about? I'm seeing the same rubbish I used to complain about in the proprietary world happening right in front of my eyes. Is this why you (GNOME developers?) are contributing to GNOME, to prevent people from using their computers the way they want? Then you add the 'no shutdown option' (https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=643457) to this, 51 comments mainly asking for the option back and... i start to wonder how many comments on a bug are needed for sane options that were removed with dubious justifications can come back to GNOME. I sincerely doubt that the 'never' or 'shutdown' options will change the new philosophy of GNOME 3. So why insisting on forcing people into your own choices? Thank you.
(In reply to comment #11) > So feedback from the VLC dev is that poking at the X screensaver directly is > broken. The interface provided by X is rather limited; when VLC called it, some > interferences with some desktop screensaver settings was noticed by a number of > users. To make matters worse, a number of users have reported that it is slow > as hell causing visible lags in video rendering. > > So no. > > xdg-screensaver is capable of using D-Bus. If it does not work, it's either a > GNOME bug or an xdg-utils bug. Likely an xdg-utils bugs. Feel free to file a bug against it on bugzilla.freedesktop.org. > As a side note I am again trying to watch a movie with totem which doesn't open > the subtitle file, ask for a plugin which it never finds. Please file a separate bug with a way to reproduce it, and we'll look into it. > Only working choice > seems to be VLC. I've now spent quite some times moving comments from one bug > tracker to another one to see 2 teams of developers refusing to cooperate to > make software work, and another team not wanting to add the "never" option on > some "it's not a typical case" basis. We're not refusing to cooperate. I just have no interest in making VLC work. If they insist on using stuff that we know is crap or broken (and that shouldn't have existed in the first place) like xdg-utils, I can't really help it. > Is that what GNOME and Free Software is about? I'm seeing the same rubbish I > used to complain about in the proprietary world happening right in front of my > eyes. Is this why you (GNOME developers?) are contributing to GNOME, to prevent > people from using their computers the way they want? I'm not going to work-around bugs in xdg-screensaver or VLC in gnome-control-center or other. I'm pretty sure you can work around it by putting some insanely long delay for the idle timeout, but it certainly won't be something we'll be adding to gnome-control-center.
Sorry for bringing other unrelated topics to the bug. In fact I think I got put off even more by the attitude on the VLC side, but the whole back and forth on each bug tracker is pretty annoying. And yes you're right that in that specific instance the "never" option would be a workaround. But maybe workaround are better than no fix? Anyway I'll continue filling bugs to appropriate projects. I have no specific issue with the never option missing right now.
*** Bug 652421 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
My $0.05 The whole new philosophy of Gnome 3 is broken by design. It implies that users are dumb and they are not capable of making choices. That's basically an insult to most of their customers. No wonder people are trying to bring Gnome 2.32 back into Fedora 15, exploring other options like XFCE or KDE and getting annoyed with Gnome-shell. Dear Gnome 3 devs, who are you writing this software for? Just yourself? or for users? If you build this software for users, why do you ignore voice of your community and users? Something has gone terribly wrong while building this Gnome 3 philosophy and that's not good for community. On the other note - adding a "never" option would do no harm, most dumb users (your target user base) will be too dumb to change it to never anyway, but those power users who need it, will be able to use it. Yes, there is an extension for gnome-hell already, but some users prefer to use fall back mode, not completely unusable gnome-shell on their production desktop. Re totem vs vlc - VLC just works, totem does not. Totem fails to play DVDs, totem fails to load subtitles correctly - no wonder why users prefer to use VLC. Yes, VLC has too many options, but I didn't not have to look at them, because with default settings, it just works. Unlike totem. So adding extra options to Gnome's apps would do no harm either. The attitude, which comes from Gnome's developers is very upsetting and disappointing. Guys, if you have balls, admit you were wrong and start listening to the community's voice.
Another $0.01: I just wanted to listen to the radio station. I've tried banshee, rhythmbox, totem - none of them managed to play (although in Fedora 14 it worked just fine). So I fired up the VLC app, and guess what? It just started to play the stream. No hassle, no issues, no crashes, nothing - just works.
i still agree with comment#4's point about defaults being sufficient to inflict typicalness on users if such was needed. ;') often there is still the need for longer settings for those of us wanting to monitor screens without typing for some arbitrarily long period of time. it would be nice to have an actual 'arbitrary/custom setting' back again without digging through gsettings every time. :')
*** Bug 670521 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
(In reply to comment #15) > The whole new philosophy of Gnome 3 is broken by design. It implies that users Such stuff doesn't belong on a bugtracker. Your thoughts of GNOME 3 are not relevant to GNOME Bugzilla. Please keep your comments to the bug, anything else is not appropriate. If you want to discuss: bugmaster@gnome.org (not here). FYI, I am one of the GNOME bugmasters.
I am one more unhappy user. That you think other applications are not doing the right thing, I can understand. That you think xdg-utils is poorly coded, I can understand. That you think screen saver should never be plain disabled, I can understand. That you refuse to add sleep-display-ac values beyond 1 hour, I do not understand. This would be trivial to implement, and wouldn't be a change in philosophy. It's just one more value in a list. With many users asking for it, I think it would be a good compromise. I am curious who came up with the list of options we have today (1 minute, 2 minutes, 3 minutes, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour.) If you ask me, 1 minute, 2 minutes and 3 minutes are the same option ("save as much power as possible", and so are 3O minutes and 1 hour ("don't care about power saving but eventually go to sleep".) So we have 7 entries where 3 or 4 would do - this doesn't seem to fit in Gnome's philosophy of keeping the options to a minimum. My own proposal for a short list of options that would make everyone happy: 1 minute 5 minutes 10 minutes 1 hour 5 hours And if you really believe that removing options "2 minutes", "3 minutes" and "30 minutes" would hurt some use cases I did not consider, then you have to admit that different users have different use cases, and consequently admit that having values beyond 1 hour makes sense.
Yet another user case: watching iplayer/itv player -- these are flash players which have no control over my screen's settings, hence it would be nice to be able to select "none" or having presentation mode extension working (it worked in Gnome 3.2, does not work in Gnome 3.4).
I use my 42" L.E.D. based television to watch movies and videos from my computer at a distance. I turn of my keyboard/touch-pad and enjoy till it blanks. I'm sure that more than one user of GNOME wants this same usage. A bug for this has been reported on Fedora (https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=692037 and at least two duplicates) and on Ubuntu (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-screensaver/+bug/1070610). There are two duplicates in GNOME's bugzilla. If this is an issue because you don't want too many choices from a drop-down, then please create a continuum with some sort of option for infinity or null so as to disable the option; or some way which has many options in one form. A political aside - This bug and GNOME's decision to abort the shutdown as default from the top-bar makes me wonder why GNOME is so worried about how I use electricity on my computer. I don't have a "power-button" on my wireless keyboard & my use of Alt-Gr impaired my ability to shut-down my computer which isn't, directly, in front of me. I'm glad that changed.
You should try the latest versions of software before putting comments in 2 year-old closed bugs which don't reflect the current state of affairs.
I'm using GNOME 3.6 in Fedora 18 & I'm still getting my screen turning off,and not getting the option past 1 hour in the Settings. I was able to turn things to zero in dconf. I haven't been building testing releases. What is the current state?
(In reply to comment #24) > I'm using GNOME 3.6 in Fedora 18 & I'm still getting my screen turning off,and > not getting the option past 1 hour in the Settings. I was able to turn things > to zero in dconf. > I haven't been building testing releases. What is the current state? You can choose to never blank the screen in GNOME 3.8 (which is only possible now as we have the screensaver tied to the screen blanking, before, it was possible to start the screensaver and have a black screen with the backlight on).