On Tue, 12 Oct 2004 19:16:47 +0100, Graham gt@pobox.com was rumoured to have said:
On Monday 11 October 2004 22:57, Wayne Stallwood wrote: (snip)
I *always* turn monitors off but one of my systems does run 24 hours.
This really bugs me, there is a reasonable excuse for leaving machines switched on, but why do people not turn off monitors (or at least set up power management to standby the monitor after a period of inactivity).
Not only do you have the whole waste of energy thing, but CRT's (and even the backlight on LCD's) have a finite life.
This is also why I hate screensavers, why have the computer display some fancy image after 20 mins of inactivity when it is just as easy to tell the monitor to shut down.
Ah, at last someone with a shared pet hate. Now if only I could persuade Linux to tell the monitor to shut down. Is there a guide to power management and how to make it work? I've fiddled around in KDE, changed BIOS settings etc but all I get is a nearly-black screen which the monitor ignores.
Hmm, unless you have some really o[ld]d hardware, it should just be a matter of:
1) Enabling dpms by adding the following to the Monitor section of your XF86Config-4 or xorg.conf and restarting X:
Option "DPMS"
Then test with `xset dpms force off' (or standby or suspend), see the dpms section of xset(1x) for details.
2) Configuring screensavers etc., which you've probably done already.
Also see setterm(1) if you use the console and want PM there too.
-- GT
rgds, /-sb.