*** Bug 315592 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Each screen gets a lock window, yes. This makes positioning on each screen absolutely reliable and prevents having to hunt for "which screen has the lock interface".

The screensaver is part of the lock window, and for this reason, the screensaver window is also unique to each screen.

There is no plan to change this approach as it allows us to guarantee proper locking and placement in all use cases.

I appreciate your stance here, however I have to say I've never had to hunt for "which screen has the lock interface" before this change - Mainly because it didn't actually matter...

I've also not had a case of screens not locking properly.

Since 4.10 I do however now have to play a lot of "which lockscreen has focus, if any?" (Bug #316084, Bug #314720, Bug #311188)

I'd rather have the old behaviour back (specifically, single instance screensaver, multiple instances looks a bit odd really), but at least if the new focus issues are addressed it won't be quite as annoying as it is now.

Since bug 315592 is marked as a duplicate of this one I will post a comment on this one.

There are some amazing opengl screensavers for linux. The one in particular that I like for dual screen setups is the block tunnel. Under dual screen setup; when you have this screen saver on and you put your eye focus at the center it looks like you are actually travelling down the tunnel. It is remarkably cool and I've had all sorts of people comment and tell me so.

With this decision you've taken away some of the cool factor out of Linux that was there previously. While this is admittedly a minor issue and if everything works properly won't effect a user working with the computer, the aesthetics has been effected negatively. Of course, people who have never had a dual screen won't miss this, but we that do.... will.

Please reconsider this decision.

I am similarly hit by the supposed duplicate, bug 315592. I agree that this makes screensavers look less than half as cool.

Also, I certainly have never searched for the unlock box (when I use it). It's not like I have a dozen screens. In any case, I have a primary screen, which houses the panel and alt-tab popup. It seems consistent to show the unlock box on the primary screen.

In addition, I don't even lock my screen, which makes this bug/feature even more irrelevant (for my usage). At very least, would it be possible to have an option to turn off this "feature". Or even better, disable it for people who don't lock their screens. Or even even better, uncouple the lock box and the screensaver.

I agree with the last two posts.  I run KDE across 6 displays, and not only does seeing so many duplicate password entry boxes look confusing (not to mention that the password entry boxes do not have focus requiring the user to click?!), but running independent screen savers on each displays looses the aesthetic effect by having them span all the displays.

What is really strange, is that when I click the "Test" button from System Settings -> Display -> Screen Locker, it WILL span all displays as I want it to.  However, when I actually lock the screen, I get independent screen savers.

Could we at least make the lock screen "feature" an option that can be turned off?  Is there any way to turn it off in the mean time without recompiling?

As much as I hate to be a "me, too" guy, "me, too".

"ccook" summarizes the key point:  With KDE running across multiple displays, at which the operator is well aware of the "primary" display, the per-display "login" boxes are distracting and "un-cool".

When my Debian system first transitioned to KDE 4.10, I also thought the screenlock/saver/login behavior was a bug; with Debian's new KDE 4.11 package, the behavior remained, and because of that I created an account just so I could comment on this.

Aaron wrote above that "There is no plan to change this approach as it allows us to guarantee proper locking and placement in all use cases."

I submit that "all use cases" were not considered, and that an option to re-enable a primary lock display (if I have captured that correctly) should be reinstated as it was in KDE 4.9.

*** This bug has been confirmed by popular vote. ***

I also created an account just for voting and commenting this really annoying bug - or: feature degrading.

We (a german software developer company) are working with dual and three monitor setups for all employes and are really (sorry) pissed of that the KDE devs disable a long beloved feature.

Nobody of our users can understand, why KDE users must be distracted by up to 3!!! login screens for locked sessions and why they suddenly have up to 3!!! separate screen saves - which - as stated before in other comments - looks seriously ugly and more than a bug, than a planned feature.

As the KDE dev stated before: The KDE devs don't care about multiple monitor setups and don't have any experience with that topic - so: Why the hell did they disable the previously great working screen saver and lock/unlock behaviour?

Sorry - I'm Qt dev for more than a decade and KDE user since the first hours - but that is one point I'm really realy pissed of!

DEVS: PLease care about users! Thanks!

ciao,
Chris

got here trying to figure out if I configured something wrong.  agree with above comments.  feels (and looks) amateurish.  all the other kids are going to laugh at me.

Ack - this buggy behaviour is just a joke...

Especially the reason:
The KDE devs don't use multiscreen environments, but decided what behaviour should be better for these (for them unusual/unknown and untested) environments... and: Not to forget: Nobody of the multiscreen users originally wanted/demanded this "feature".

This bug is the best example for user unfriendly and user unaware thinking of devs.

Sadly the devs don't see their error and just state it as "It's not a bug, it's a feature.".

Unbelievable.

ciao,
Chris

Good day!

I too think this should be corrected and brought back to its original, flawless behaviour.

Multiple-monitor-setups are not so exotic any more. 

And in my opinion having multiple login-boxes and multiple instances of a screensaver does not appear to be “state of the art” and really looks somewhat strange in 2014 – to put it mildly.

It surely does not suit the otherwise excellent look and feel of KDE.

Kind regards!

OpenMind

I've also just created the account to confirm that the new behavior discouraging.
Waiting for a fix and in meanwhile looking for KDE alternatives, which doesn't have this "nice feature".

It is definitely a shame that screensavers aren't nearly as nice now. 

even ms windows can spread its screensavers across multiple monitors, and you cant let kde be outdone by ms windows like that ;)

Would be very nice to have a tickbox somewhere to enable proper screensavers again :

cheers,

*** Bug 339673 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

The screen locker architecture changed with Plasma 5. The classic screen savers are no longer supported. The 4.x series won't see any further feature development, so this bug report won't be implemented as it doesn't apply to our current version any more.

I want to thank you for your bug report and for helping improving the quality of our software and I'm sorry that we were not able to provide a fix before we retired the affected component.

Just wanted to add my 2 cents. 

I also created an account for this and would really like my Asciiquarium screensaver to span all three monitors instead of having a separate instance on each.