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X11 screen locking: a secure and modular approach

leahneukirchen.org

11–20 of 91 posts

Re: X11 screen locking: a secure and modular approach

#11

My experiences with screen locking on Linux over time, using various machines: * The screen doesn't lock, and remains on while the lid is closed. * The screen doesn't lock, but does turn off when the lid is closed. * The screen locks, but the machine doesn't suspend when the lid is closed. * The screen doesn't turn on after the lid is opened. Key commands work, though. * The screen turns on after the lid is opened, b…

Most of what you describe isn't the screen lock but sounds more like something isn't communicating system events properly. That or bad hardware with poor open source driver vendor support. Also, this is why I don't use Linux any more. It's grown into a dumpster fire of ad-hoc patches from big corps looking to hammer every last drop of cloud server performance or poorly designed desktops made by people who obviously d…

> or poorly designed desktops made by people who obviously don't use them.

Do you mean the design part or the coding part? From my limited experience desktops are made by contributors and volunteers work on whatever affects them the most or some might work on cool stuff. It is what it is, without someone with money hiring a large dev team and foucssing on user tickets it will never change. As a developer I prefer something customizable like KDE where I can fix a crash in an app if I hit it over a Windows like experience where important apps like the screen magnifier had hard coded shortcuts and you could not customize them.

Re: X11 screen locking: a secure and modular approach

#12

My experiences with screen locking on Linux over time, using various machines: * The screen doesn't lock, and remains on while the lid is closed. * The screen doesn't lock, but does turn off when the lid is closed. * The screen locks, but the machine doesn't suspend when the lid is closed. * The screen doesn't turn on after the lid is opened. Key commands work, though. * The screen turns on after the lid is opened, b…

[deleted]

Re: X11 screen locking: a secure and modular approach

#13

My experiences with screen locking on Linux over time, using various machines: * The screen doesn't lock, and remains on while the lid is closed. * The screen doesn't lock, but does turn off when the lid is closed. * The screen locks, but the machine doesn't suspend when the lid is closed. * The screen doesn't turn on after the lid is opened. Key commands work, though. * The screen turns on after the lid is opened, b…

* The lock screen pops up, requests a password, and disappears after you enter it, but you find that your password and enter key also made their way into the foreground text field.

I love linux, but it's not wart-free.

Re: X11 screen locking: a secure and modular approach

#14

My experiences with screen locking on Linux over time, using various machines: * The screen doesn't lock, and remains on while the lid is closed. * The screen doesn't lock, but does turn off when the lid is closed. * The screen locks, but the machine doesn't suspend when the lid is closed. * The screen doesn't turn on after the lid is opened. Key commands work, though. * The screen turns on after the lid is opened, b…

Yes, sadly I think the best GNU/Linux for laptops is Windows 10 with WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux). By far.

Re: X11 screen locking: a secure and modular approach

#15
I prefer https://github.com/muennich/physlock

It seems more secure as it bypasses X, and you can be sure (can you? I just assume this, I don't really know) your input is not even being passed to X when your screen is locked. In practice I've found it very reliable.

Re: X11 screen locking: a secure and modular approach

#16

My experiences with screen locking on Linux over time, using various machines: * The screen doesn't lock, and remains on while the lid is closed. * The screen doesn't lock, but does turn off when the lid is closed. * The screen locks, but the machine doesn't suspend when the lid is closed. * The screen doesn't turn on after the lid is opened. Key commands work, though. * The screen turns on after the lid is opened, b…

+1. I'll add:

* The screen locks, unlock, but the network card cannot wake up anymore and requires a reboot.

* The screen locks, let you enter things, but doesn't seem to react, then suddenly, replay all the things for 20 seconds in 1 seconds, and displays an error message

* the screen locks, but you can see the unlock screen for a few seconds when you wake the laptop up

Re: X11 screen locking: a secure and modular approach

#17

My experiences with screen locking on Linux over time, using various machines: * The screen doesn't lock, and remains on while the lid is closed. * The screen doesn't lock, but does turn off when the lid is closed. * The screen locks, but the machine doesn't suspend when the lid is closed. * The screen doesn't turn on after the lid is opened. Key commands work, though. * The screen turns on after the lid is opened, b…

Yes, sadly I think the best GNU/Linux for laptops is Windows 10 with WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux). By far.

Or a distribution with Wayland instead of X11...

Re: X11 screen locking: a secure and modular approach

#19
post #10

My experiences with screen locking on Linux over time, using various machines: * The screen doesn't lock, and remains on while the lid is closed. * The screen doesn't lock, but does turn off when the lid is closed. * The screen locks, but the machine doesn't suspend when the lid is closed. * The screen doesn't turn on after the lid is opened. Key commands work, though. * The screen turns on after the lid is opened, b…

It's 2020 and locking your screen on Linux is unreliable. It's difficult to promote Linux as a worthy consumer desktop OS alternative.

Yes, it's imperfect and irritating in many ways. Many other actually (BT, Wifi, battery life, they all have their problems).

But your alternative is one totally locked on ecosystem and one provided with embedded spywares.

It's good enough, and since we are not giving millions of dollars to the editors like we do with products disrespecting us, I understand we can't ask for perfection.

Re: X11 screen locking: a secure and modular approach

#20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of what you describe isn't the screen lock but sounds more like something isn't communicating system events properly. That or bad hardware with poor open source driver vendor support. Also, this is why I don't use Linux any more. It's grown into a dumpster fire of ad-hoc patches from big corps looking to hammer every last drop of cloud server performance or poorly designed desktops made by people who obviously d…

> or poorly designed desktops made by people who obviously don't use them. Do you mean the design part or the coding part? From my limited experience desktops are made by contributors and volunteers work on whatever affects them the most or some might work on cool stuff. It is what it is, without someone with money hiring a large dev team and foucssing on user tickets it will never change. As a developer I prefer som…

Being able to recompile from source to change hardcoded values isn't actually any better in my opinion. Especially given how much of a pain it can be to get a build environment set up for many projects.
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