6

Will Wayland, unlike X, be able to "know" about a full screen app, and not fire up the screensaver? I remember reading up on this, and X (or present KWin/Compiz) cannot know or be told when to hold off on a screensaver.

UPDATE: Apparantly my source was a bit one-sided, and X can be told to hold off the screensaver. This new fact turns my question into this: can Wayland be told there is a full-screen app and do the necessary things, without explicitely telling it to back off on the big red "Start Screensaver" button?

rubenvb
  • 370
  • 1
  • 2
  • 14
  • X can certainly be told to hold off on the screensaver. I don't know the details, but this came up before: [Tell mplayer to prevent the screensaver from kicking in while playing](http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/1337), [Screen doesn't always shut off on its own](http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/1583) – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' Jun 05 '11 at 23:40
  • I don't know where you were reading up on, but your source seems to be invalid. Maybe they were trying to say there wasn't ONE way to do it across all DE's on X? Can you give your source? – Caleb Jun 06 '11 at 14:33
  • Some examples (all relate to VLC, but that's part of my point/question): [uno](https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=111077), [dos](http://forums.opensuse.org/english/get-technical-help-here/applications/445872-vlc-does-not-disable-screensaver.html),... – rubenvb Jun 06 '11 at 14:37

1 Answers1

5

I believe that this phoronix article has some answers for you about wayland and screensaver.

This article mainly says that it will be more integrated :

it can ensure that no window can appear atop the screensaver surface, it can properly detect idling and grabs already, and has complete control over the screen. Unlike the X design, there wouldn't even need to be a screensaver "window" that's on top but the compositor could just keep painting a black screen.

It seems to have been implemented 3 months ago. He writes that :

This also causes properly written animating clients to stop rendering, and we can hit zero CPU usage, even when there is a screensaver active.

Coren
  • 4,970
  • 1
  • 24
  • 43