Question: is this security problem with the Cinnamon screensaver fixed?

[LinuxOnTheDesktop]

I refer to this problem with the screensaver.. That report shows that at least one person besides me has seen the problematic behaviour. Thank you for your time.

[LinuxOnTheDesktop]

I find that even xscreensaver has the same problem, though with xscreensaver the period for which the desktop is exposed seems a little shorter than on Cinnamon. (The PC at issue is a fast one.) Is this then a Cinnamon problem? A Linux problem?

[mtwebster]

To my knowledge it's caused by unavoidable lag between the x server and window manager - muffin (and others) continuously communicate with the x server to maintain stacking, positioning etc.. and events such as a monitor being added/removed or recovering from sleep (which often involves monitor-related things, depending on drivers, hardware, etc..) happen asynchronously, which can result in these brief visual anomalies, before the window manager can catch up. There are generally a lot of other things happening at once during these events, which can contribute to these delays.

At some point during this bottleneck, all of the windows may get restacked. The problem is nothing really knows that the screensaver window should be at the top of this mess, so it may end up losing that position until cinnamon-screensaver gets a chance to restore it.

Xscreensaver may exhibit this less because it's written mostly in native x11 code (versus using tool-kits like cinnamon and others do), and is more efficient as a result. Computer speed can obviously impact this behavior also.

[LinuxOnTheDesktop]

@mtwebster

So here we have an X problem and a serious and very long-standing one. So, roll on Wayland - yes?

[mtwebster]

Yes, that's the plan.