Well, I'm mostly new to the Linux deal. I've tried Mandrake long ago for a short while, but never got on then. I've tried recently to do SuSE Linux, but found that it gave me odd problems, so I've come back to Mandrake 9.2.

Mandrake 9.2 plays well with my video card, actually giving me 3d acceleration, and that's good.

For some reason I can't explain, I have no xscreensaver.

Installing it doesn't work. Installing extensions of it doesn't work.

Simply nothing shows up in the manager for configuring the desktop, but it will go into window locking mode.

Does anyone have any clue what the problem is?

Try installing xscreensaver by going to your menu, configuration, software install. You just need to type in 'xscreensaver' then search and isntall the package it finds. After that installs, type in 'xscreensaver-demo' at the command line. This should bring the xscreensaver application up.

Using the command line did allow me to bring up a window for xscreensaver, but there was no option for turning the screensaver on or off. Still no screensaver control in the normal "configure desktop" gui, and no screensavers listed.

Using the install software deal and searching for screensaver simply got me an "addon" to the normal xscreensaver, which it claims to have installed, but that I still can't get to.

Disable the screensaver in your normal configure desktop screen and just use the xscreensaver interface. The "blank screen after" option specifies how long your computer stays idle before the screensaver comes up. So if you have that option set on 10. It will take 10 minutes. If you want to add more screensavers to your xscreensavers list, you have to edit your /home/<user>/.xscreesaver file.