Consider the option power_saver. This largely turns your monitor off, so you save a few electrons a rest from their frantic day. Monitors and I believe video cards produced in the last three years mostly support the DPMS (Display Power Management System). Both my NEC C500 and my Nokia 445Xpro supported DPMS. Your operating system, Linux, can then work with DPMS, telling the video card to tell the monitor to turn itself off -- in about 15 minutes my monitor's light goes yellow and blank, in 30 minutes red and my monitor shuts off, getting physically cool. With DPMS, the search for a screen saver becomes mis-directed.
I make use of DPMS through X in the file /etc/X11/XF86Config with the line Option "power_saver" Here is some context, Section "Device" Identifier "Jims Matrox" VendorName "Matrox" BoardName "Millennium G200 8MB" VideoRam 8192 #Option "power_saver" #Added by Jim Burt Option "power_saver" # Insert Clocks lines here if appropriate EndSection > On Tue, Dec 22, 1998 at 12:58:39AM -0800, Martin Waller wrote: > > > > I guess this is a bit of a newbie question, but how do I get a > > screensaver to come up under X instaed of the screen just blanking? > > > > http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-user-9812/msg01163