In Fedora 8 when I closed my laptop lid, my screen would lock. Under Ubuntu 8.04 this doesn’t happen. After a bit of digging, I found a solution. The gconf setting is “/apps/gnome-power-manager/lock/blank_screen”. When set to true, closing the lid will lock the screen. Luvvvly. 
Callum Macdonald
Callum on life
Works just fine with Kubuntu.
@Scott Kitterman: I’m not sure what you mean. The change works fine with Kubuntu, or the screen locks automatically under Kubuntu?
Thanks. Very helpful.
Excellent. Thanks for finding this setting.
I am running Fedora 9, and had the opposite problem: it defaults to locking the screen whenever it blanks the screen (such as when the laptop lid is closed). I do NOT want it to lock the screen then. Just blank it, then restore the screen when the laptop lid is opened again.
Clearing the checkbox hasn’t worked yet, but it’s a good start.
Thanks, very helpful!
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Thanks, worked well for me.
Don’t know why they disabled this feature.
This work for me on Ubuntu 9.04, thanks.
Worked like a charm on 9.10.
Thanks. I found this very helpful. I also found some other problem settings that were bothering me much less!
worked like a charm in ubuntu 10.04… just had to run gconf-editor… thank you
Thanks a ton !