Monitor power-down/screensaver

[Tim Wood <tleathley@yahoo.com>]

Hello,
          I'm running potato on a desktop and a laptop using
ice-wm/gnome in X.

The laptop is set in the bios to blank the screen and that's fine.

The desktop screen blanks in console but not in X. I'm trying to wean my
family off windoze - but with limited success.
To make it more familiar i have xdm set to give an X login. I have used
"xset dpms 1200 1200" in .xsession and "append'apm=on'" in lilo.conf but
to no avail.

There is also a measure of disagreement, in general, over whether to use
a screensaver or have the monitor power-down. The suggestion is that
cycling the monitor ht will reduce it's life.
I cannot get the screensaver to work on either my laptop or desktop.
When I select  "random" the preview panel works but will not work when I
select "try" and no other selection shows anything in the preview panel.

I upgraded Gnome to 1.2.2 bu this behaviour was there before doing so.

The other oddity is that a right click on the panel does nothing and the
offer of adding an applet does not appear on the menu.

Suggestions as to what the cause is and how to fix it would be welcome.

TIA,
        Tim