Timeout / screensaver for no apparent reason

[pccobbler]

I use a number of different Linux distributions on SSDs in external enclosures and USB flash drives. All run via USB, of course. Two of them, on USB flash drives, are Sparky Xfce and MinimalGUI, both Stable. The PC is not new, with Intel 3rd Generation Core processor and 8 GB of memory.

One annoying instance is the activation of the screensaver when it's not appropriate. This seems to happen not long after I start the system, though I cannot swear that it does not happen at other times. What I mean by this is that I will stop moving the mouse for less than a second and a screensaver will appear. It happens on both Xfce and MinimalGUI. It might have something to do with communications with the drive being slow, as it's a Samsung USB 3.1 USB flash drive plugged into a USB 2.0 port (the 3.0 ports are unreliable). I have never seen this behavior with other Linux distributions (Devuan Cinnamon or MATE, Linux Mint LMDE Cinnamon, or Gekko Linux MATE).

Has anyone seen this screensaver behavior?

[Murdock2525]

It's something that's caused by autostart. Mine was due to Stacer being autostart on boot and inside stacer Xscreensaver was in it's autostart.
So Stacer starts and there came Xscreensaver a second later.
You may not run that one but dig deep in your autostart configs to see if you can find it.