Xfce Forum

narag

Member

From: Madrid, Spain

Registered: 2024-11-02

Posts: 3

[SOLVED] Prevent blank screen when locking

Hello,

This seems like a simple enough question, but I've failed miserably trying to find the solution. The search invariably shows people with more serious problems.

I have a desktop with a freshly installed Debian 12 stable Xfce. When I press CTRL-L, the screen locks. That's great  But it also blanks. I don't want that to happen. I want a log in screen with boxes for user (already filled) and password.

Yes, when I press a key, the login screen appears after a few seconds. But it would be much better if it is already there expecting my input, so I can just type the password and press return.

Also my monitor is really a TV that powers off after five minutes and doesn't powers on when it receives the input signal again, so I need to use the remote

TIA,

   Nico

Last edited by narag (2024-12-30 00:35:33)

narag

Member

From: Madrid, Spain

Registered: 2024-11-02

Posts: 3

Re: [SOLVED] Prevent blank screen when locking

I removed light-locker and installed i3lock. That somehow solved the problem.

"Somehow" because i3lock looks is not exactly what I had in mind. I would rather use the same default login screen. Instead i3lock has a weird UI with a white screen and a circle that blinks when typing, there's no box and apparently I can't customize the background. But at least it doesn't blank the screen 

I've spent hours down this rabbit hole. Most alternative screen lockers are only for Wayland or there's no Debian package for them. It seems Xfce uses screensavers as alternative lockers, but none was installed in the default Debian setup. I am a little worried that gnome-screensaver would require unwanted dependencies, so I'm going with i3lock for now. Same for replacing lightdm with gdm3... also not sure if gdm3 can be really called from Xfce to lock the screen.

I found mentions to some xfce-screensaver or xfce4-screensaver but it doesn't seem to be included in the official distribution yet.