Comment 24 for bug 241206

Stuart, the gnome-screensaver code watches the "idle_delay" gconf variable, and any change to it triggers reset_idle_watch. Your changing that variable is a work-around for those who are not comfortable with patching code and recompiling, but it's not a solution.

The precise cause of this bug has been diagnosed in my comments 16, 17, and 21, and patches have been provided to fix it. Unfortunately, it appears that my patches were never accepted by Ubuntu or upstream. What graphics subsystem you have is irrelevant to this bug.

That said, I am now using the stock gnome-session and gnome-screensaver packages in Maverick, and I have yet to experience the issue.

If you are still getting the "fade to black and then back to desktop" issue on Maverick, I recommend applying the patch in comment 21. It's only a few lines long (so it still should be valid on Maverick) and will take care of most of the problem.

My patches from comments 16 and 17 are much larger (and therefore, much more likely to have broken between Lucid and Maverick) and only are needed if you regularly disable the screensaver, wait for a while, and then re-enable it.