Problem: screen timeout in 15 minutes

This question was originally posted on the guix subreddit¹

My problem is that my screens timeout in 15 minutes if I’m watching something, which is problematic. It seems like the answer is my xorg settings, and I am trying to apply this: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Display_Power_Management_Signaling which calls for editing of my .xorg.conf.d file. It seems like it should be according to these directions: https://guix.gnu.org/manual/en/html_node/X-Window.html However, I want to make sure my syntax is correct.

(list (service gnome-desktop-service-type)
           (set-xorg-configuration
            (xorg-configuration
             (extra-config '("Option \"DPMS\" \"false\"")))

Am I grokking that right? I’ve found that getting such things wrong in guix can be costly, and the documentation is without examples of the equivalent xorg configuration. A bonus would be if I could only disable the screen shutdown when I am plugged in to power, but I’m taking this one step at a time.

Anwer: xset

I am runnig exwm on guix linux, with Gnome atop for some setting management. However, Gnome doesn’t seem to be in charge of power settings (I tried, and no-go). Because of this it was recommmended that I ask in the exwm subreddit, where I received an answer beautifully quickly². I was able to apply the answer as follows:

Get xset on guix

guix install xset

It’s available just in the standard repo, but does not require sudo despite being pretty low-level stuff.

Add the following to some always-run-on-start place

The original poster suggested .initrc, and I suppose .bashrc would work too. As it happens I have an elisp file that I use for monitor setup every location I go, which is run at startup, so I put this there:

;; disable screen blanking
(start-process-shell-command
 "xset screen" nil "xset s off")
;; disable screen power management
(start-process-shell-command
   "xset dpms" nil "xset -dpms")

Resources

https://www.reddit.com/r/EXWM/comments/16zp0w1/how_to_disable_screen_timeouts_in_guix/

Footnotes

¹ The first post with several ideas was here: https://www.reddit.com/r/GUIX/comments/16ofwbu/how_to_disable_screen_timeouts_in_guix/

² cross posted and answered here: https://www.reddit.com/r/EXWM/comments/16zp0w1/how_to_disable_screen_timeouts_in_guix/