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KDE is an international technology team creating user-friendly free and open source software for desktop and portable computing. KDE’s software runs on GNU/Linux, BSD and other operating systems, including Windows.

Plasma 6 Bugs

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A lighter-weight kscreenlocker alternative (kscreenlocker uses a lot of VRAM) (lemmy.ca)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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According to nvtop, on both my nvidia and AMD computers, kscreenlocker_greet uses 200-400MB of VRAM while the screen is locked -- doesn't that feel excessive for a simple screen locker (I do realize that it's QML and thus in theory can use as much VRAM as say plasmashell).

This is kind of annoying as I was trying to set up a chatbot using my main desktop while it's idle, and would like that extra 400MB back for a higher context length.

Wasn't sure if this was a bug or just how software is nowadays so I opted to start a discussion rather than finishing filing a bug at bugs.kde.org.

Anyway, anyone know of an alternative screenlocker for kwin_wayland?

I thought I would disable kscreenlocker completely (by setting the screen to never lock?) and use something like swayidle and swaylock, but it doesn't look like kwin supports the wayland extensions required to use swaylock.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I'd be surprised if there was any alternative, to be honest.

I'd file the bug - your case is not common. I run kscreenlocker just fine and it's not such a ram hog here.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

VRAM or regular RAM? It doesn't use that much regular RAM.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

I use the Cinnamon screen saver with i3wm. It's just a Python script, it's reasonably light in resources, it looks smart enough and it comes with a nice command to remote-control it if you need to start the screen saver, lock or unlock it programmatically.

I'm not sure it works in Wayland though. I only use Xorg. I suppose it should since Cinnamon works in Wayland too now.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I'm specifically looking for something that works with kwin_wayland, this being the KDE instance and all.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The reason why I posted this is because there's nothing that prevents you from using any old screensaver / screenlocker out there in KDE. As I said, I use the Cinnamon screen saver in i3, which is not the Cinnamon environment.

That's the beauty of Linux: you can mix and match things to your heart's content.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

I actually did already mention, in Wayland you need to coordinate screen locking with the compositor (kwin), otherwise I'd be using swaylock.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Ah okay, I didn't know that. I personally try to stay away from Wayland as long as possible so support for it gets better before I have to jump in. I'm not an early adopter for that sort of thing - even though Wayland is 16 years old at this point, but amazingly it's still too green for my taste.