11.3: "screen saver" locks session even though disabled, solution

On my 11.3 desktop I was annoyed by what I thought was the screen saver locking my session after an idle period, requiring my password to unlock. Well, I didn’t want this behaviour and it wasn’t supposed to do that, I had disabled every place in the desktop configuration that seemed to be related. I even looked into the KDE4 rc files with a text editor and they all seemed to be in order.

Eventually after some searching I found the answer: It’s the setting “lock screen on resume” in the advanced settings > power daemon. Once I turned it off, it was fine; this desktop doesn’t need suspend+resume anyway.

It seems that this is not a case of counterintuitive naming; it seems that in some configurations there is a bug where a stray event can trigger a screen lock by the powersaved (?). I don’t really understand it, but you can start your investigation here if you are interested:

KDE4 screen lock problem

It doesn’t happen to everybody or every machine, which is why it can be mysterious. So hope this helps if you are having the same problem.

Another issue related to the screen saver I have run in to is a problem that can occur if the option “Let PowerDevel manage screen powersaving” is not selected in KDE Personnel Settings / Power Management / General Settings / Settings and Profile. If this option is not selected, then it appears that the Kernel Screen Saver takes over and blanks your screen after the default time, around 10 minutes as I remember, even as no screen saver is selected in KDE. By default, on most installations, this option is checked, but on one installation to an Intel P31 chipset, it came up not checked, driving me crazy, until I found this option not selected and turned it back on.

Thank You,