Hi all. I'm on a new install of Debian Stretch, with XFCE. When I'm inactive on the computer for a few minutes the screen turns black (normal) but the computer also becomes unresponsive and I just see a flashing text cursor at the top left of the black screen. It does this every time and I have to restart. However if I log out first then leave the computer then this problem doesn't happen.

I'm on Nvidia driver 390.77 (the current Stretch backport driver) and I have tried the normal Stretch Nvidia driver (an older one) - the same happens on both. My GPU is a GTX 1070.

The package light-locker was installed with Debian and I presume this package might be faulty. I sent a Debian bug report about this. But in the meantime is it safe to uninstall light-locker?

It probably isn't relevant, but it may be, so which screensaver package are you using?

Does this occur when the screensaver is disabled?

As I typed this, I had an idea for a test. Set the screensaver to "blank screen" and see whether to problem reoccurs. Then try disabling the screensaver and retest. That might show whether the screensaver is a factor in this, or irrelevant to it.

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^ yes.
but on a default xfce install, there should be no separate screensaver; just power management and screen locking.
it could be an ACPI issue.

unclear.
which is the correct driver for your GPU?
how are you making sure that the switching succeeded?

if it doesn't pull any dependencies with it, yes.

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same exact problem with the mate desktop environment, on a ryzen 2700 system with a evga 750 ti.

have not submitted a bug report, however, have downloaded and installed the very latest distro. so apparently they did not head your bug report, and a significant one it is at that.

so the question is, is this problem ubiquitous to every single desktop environment ? i have to believe it is the screen saver, and there has to be a way to prevent it until 'they' decide to update with a patch

okay, problem fixed. not pretty though. i reinstalled debian, using only the default debian desktop environment. on a positive note, i made better choices all around this time with the options, like choosing a better filesystem scheme, with my partitions. i'll be the op decided to install all the desktop environment options. well, there was something there that isn't available to me now, and that is better font control. i am having a devil of a time reading these 8 point fonts, because font applet isn't available now. i'm not getting that these linux people don't understand that older people are using desktops. we need larger fonts