Ly: Display Manager with Console UI | Hacker News Reader

Ly: Display Manager with Console UI

github.com

104 pointsklaussilveira35 comments

I've been using Ly for a while now. It does the job and it even has a Matrix effect that makes everyone think you're a hacker

I like the Doom flames.

I tried it a couple of times, but i think just a tty with the shell configured to start whatever when logged in via e.g. tty1 is superior.

Also I kept having issues with it, not using pam correctly on arch.

If you don't switch between window managers is there any point in having a DM?

Why not just login and run "sway" or "startx"

I've used DMs only for eye candy, as it looks a bit better than using getty/greetd to login.

But I've never got DMs working without any problems, so I just have

  if [[ $(tty) = /dev/tty1 ]]; then
    exec sway; logout
  fi

in my .zprofile file, which just works (tm).

This has the advantage of executing all your shell mcguffins too, so PYTHON4_LC_COLOR=Europe/Orange is set for the entire desktop session, not just the shells you launch from your desktop environment.

(By the way, exec is a fundamental Unix syscall of interest in that it replaces the current process’s code with new code. Your logout call will never run. The exec is the last thing zsh does before being replaced by sway.)

(What if sway doesn't exist?)

Then you probably don't want the 'logout' there anyway, so you can get a shell and see the output that says why it didn't run.

That’s a good point but I think the original intention was clearly “run sway until it’s done, then logout.”

Also if sway dies not exist just change to tty2 e.g. and log in there. This will not Start sway there.

logout is unreachable here because the previous command is exec

This is exactly what I do. It’s also a lot faster

A little thread 2 years ago (22 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31459013

I just use my tty1, especially since I can work a good chunk of my morning without having to launch my DE.

One more vote for TTY. I've not been using a display manager for over a decade now. One less dependency, one less thing to configure. Just works.

For those looking for a dead simple DM with autologin capabilities I can recommend emptty: https://github.com/tvrzna/emptty

I've also used greetd for this: https://sr.ht/~kennylevinsen/greetd/

Interesting license. How is it different from MIT? Except for swearing?

Due to the WTFPL having no restrictions it seems like it would be functionally identical to MIT-0 or BSD-0, as it wouldn't require attribution or a copy of the copyright/permission notice. It's about as close as one can get to public domain without being public domain.

Is there a screencast (preferably with a transcript of pressed keys) that we can see? Because I’m not entirely clear on what this is, exactly.

Is it like a tmux that automatically creates/arranges new panes for new processes?

In the Linux desktop world, "display manager" has various responsibilities but most people not steeped in system components might call it a "login screen". So this is a terminal-based replacement for GDM, SDDM, etc.

The traditional reasons for a “display manager” are gone as even X now runs as the user as part of their session.

They are just login managers now.

They still do some stuff that otherwise you have to put in your xinitrc. Also, keyring sessions.

Most of that (e.g., keyring) is PAM, not the manager itself.

The xinitrc thing is for all intents and purposes just a command run before your session binary, and sometimes a few extra env vars. Arguably a bad design (just let that be up to the session binary), it oh well. History is what it is.

https://kl.wtf/posts/2022/03/12/login-managers-an-introducti...

Appears to be a replacement for gdm that is console based (picking and launching your graphical desktop environment). A neat idea, I don't think this has been done before.

Why does it depend on xorg if it's a TUI program?

To start an X session after logging in

I tried Ly maybe a couple years ago, but I ran some issues. I've had great luck with greetd+tuigreet. The UI is quite similar as well.

This looks kind of like the display manager that runs on my MNT Pocket Reform.

Here it is in action https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nspf7yapGY&t=73s

I love this, and the doom splash screen, too!

readme links to https://fabiensanglard.net/doom_fire_psx/index.html

would be nice for us noobs to see an example of adding the SELinux rule/exception for it for Fedora as mentioned in the readme.

Maybe the author of the README doesn't know how to write the rule :)

https://github.com/fairyglade/ly/issues/494#issuecomment-150...

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