----- Original Message -----
On Mon, Sep 09, 2013 at 02:32:49PM -0400, Matthias Clasen wrote:
Can the screen shield be made always off? I.e., I would prefer not to
The shield is lowered when the user goes idle. You can inhibit that from happening, e.g. with gnome-session-inhibit --inhibit idle --inhibit-only
This will also prevent the screen from locking and prevent the monitor from going into power-saving mode, correct?
You can separate shield from locking in gnome control center. I.e. you can have a shield, but it doesn't have to lock the session.
Alas, you always have to have the shield. The only other option is to disable the idle detection (or inhibit it), which wastes energy (monitor doesn't turn off).
At home, I was used to bump the mouse to see my desktop. Now I have to drag or hit Esc. It's not that much difficult, of course, but if I do it twenty times a day, it becomes a bit annoying. The last time I tried, Bastion Nocera successfully ignored my requests to avoid lowering shield when session locking is disabled. It's trendy.
I'm pretty sure "Bastion" rejected the idea, instead of simply ignoring it :)
There's a gnome-shell extension to disable it.
On the other hand, I saw Windows 8 recently and I couldn't find a difference. They copied GNOME's behavior perfectly. It felt like home :-)
And that's how to disable it on Windows: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2013667/8-worst-windows-8-irritations-and-how...
The reason why it's there is the same as why it's in GNOME, it stops touches/keypresses/mouse clicks from getting to the apps for the time when the screen turns back on. So it's a requirement for touch devices, as well as for desktops and laptops that lack touch.