SUMMARY *** NOTE: If you are reporting a crash, please try to attach a backtrace with debug symbols. See https://community.kde.org/Guidelines_and_HOWTOs/Debugging/How_to_create_useful_crash_reports *** Looking at the powerdevil code, it looks like Screen Energy Saving defaults to the default displayIntegerBase value of 10. Not only is this arbitrary, it is quite long and leaves user screens on for a long time. If someone takes 10 minute breaks 6 times a day, that's an hour of wasted screen time and wasted energy. While this is easily changeable in settings, I don't see any reason why this shouldn't be set by default to the most carbon friendly option (1 minute, which is the minimum).
There's a balance here. A 1 minute timeout would be very annoying, and cause the screen to turn off when for example people are reading text without moving the mouse. That would risk people being so frustrated by it that they turn off screen energy saving entirely or set it to a super high value as an overcompensation. The current value is what we believe to be a good balance here to avoid annoying the user into wanting to change it to something that wastes much more energy. Highly opinionated users or who care a lot more about their carbon footprint than the average person does are of course free to set it to a very low value.
(In reply to Nate Graham from comment #1) > There's a balance here. A 1 minute timeout would be very annoying, and cause > the screen to turn off when for example people are reading text without > moving the mouse. That would risk people being so frustrated by it that they > turn off screen energy saving entirely or set it to a super high value as an > overcompensation. > > The current value is what we believe to be a good balance here to avoid > annoying the user into wanting to change it to something that wastes much > more energy. > > Highly opinionated users or who care a lot more about their carbon footprint > than the average person does are of course free to set it to a very low > value. That's a fair point. Giving no input whatsoever for a minute is a common use case. But for 10 minutes? It seems high to me. Anyhow your point is taken and I won't push the issue further especially since moving from 10 to say 5 minutes would be less significant in terms of carbon footprint reduction. Also as an aside, not that Windows should be a point of reference, but I believe Win10 uses 1min as a default too.