9 ms·

Ly – A TUI Display Manager

71 points by maydemir 4y ago

gigatexal 4y ago
Anyone got video of this in action?
- filmor 4y ago
  Knowing the alternative tuigreet (https://github.com/apognu/tuigreet https://github.com/apognu/tuigreet), there won't be much of a difference between a video and the given screenshot. You have a prompt, you enter username and password and your Wayland compositor/X session starts up.
  - Fnoord 4y ago
    The last release of Ly was on 3 Feb 2020. More than two years ago. I would rather use your solution (which is also written in Rust). The thing display/login managers have going for them is they allow certain configuration before logging in, or they show certain information before logging in. Whatever you want to configure or display depends (mostly on preference). Thinking about it, I am not sure I need anything. I mean, all I do is type sway.
  - nerdponx 4y ago
    Another good alternative is Emptty.
- 1MachineElf 4y ago
  Maybe this will be helpful. https://youtu.be/JwudRbgLTNQ?start=438 https://youtu.be/JwudRbgLTNQ?start=438
seqizz 4y ago
I envy nice display managers, they're the nostalgia for me. I'm not using one for a long time, thanks to disk encryption and auto-login.
- rgoulter 4y ago
  > disk encryption and auto-login. How does this work? I'd think that auto-login is a convenience that reduces security, and disk encryption would only be meaningful with some factor of authentication?
  - Lester_Square 4y ago
    You need to enter the key to decrypt the disk during the boot process, so having another password just to login is slightly unnecessary unless you have multiple users on the device
    - francoispon 4y ago
      i wanted to do this too, but I have to enter my password to unlock my key manager (ie: seahorse on gnome), any way to work around this?
ducktective 4y ago
1- Tangential, Why "login manager" is called display manager in Linux-speak? 2- Isn't it better to use a login manager that is 1- graphical and 2- uses the same GUI tech as your DE (for example gtk for xfce/gnome and qt for KDE) so the actual GUI apps could be hot-loaded in memory and the initial cold-runs of programs could be faster? Thanks for the project. Seems clean.
- rcthompson 4y ago
  1. I think the term comes from X11 jargon, where each login session is associated with a display (the thing described by the contents of `$DISPLAY`.
- 1MachineElf 4y ago
  I'm interested in trying this out with i3. I've only just started using i3 and the default lightdm display manager (on NixOS) looks and feels out-of-place with it. Ly seems to be a logical next step.
  - doubled112 4y ago
    Are you the only user? Do you always use i3? If yes to both, you could have your bashrc (or you shell's equivalent) start X and i3 on a TTY login? https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Xinit#Autostart_X_at_login https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Xinit#Autostart_X_at_login
    - LargoLasskhyfv 4y ago
      An even more lazy approach is logging into the console, regardless if textmode or framebuffer, and simply do upward arrow & enter, since whatever starts your session is the last entry in shell history anyways :-) This way there is less surprise/annoyance with flickering/crashing X, like you could have when starting X unconditionally after login, which could happen after you modified something to test. On another console, to not spoil the history for that upward arrow & enter thing ;-) Which works regardless of shell/WM/DE/OS/whatever, at least it does so for me.
    - 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
nickloewen 4y ago
I made a quick survey of text-based display managers a couple days ago. Ly looks fantastic, but I went with tbsm, which had almost no dependencies and was super simple to get going. https://github.com/loh-tar/tbsm https://github.com/loh-tar/tbsm http://loh-tar.github.io/tbsm/ http://loh-tar.github.io/tbsm/
- russellendicott 4y ago
  If you like TUIs I'd love to get some feeback on a project I just parked called Uggly. It's like a browser but for TUI's served by servers. http://uggly.bytester.net http://uggly.bytester.net
this_is_eline 4y ago
It 'just works', but its so 'ligth' with features that you might as well use xinit with startx.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

71 points by maydemir 4y ago

gigatexal 4y ago

Anyone got video of this in action?

filmor 4y ago
Knowing the alternative tuigreet (https://github.com/apognu/tuigreet https://github.com/apognu/tuigreet), there won't be much of a difference between a video and the given screenshot. You have a prompt, you enter username and password and your Wayland compositor/X session starts up.
- Fnoord 4y ago
  The last release of Ly was on 3 Feb 2020. More than two years ago. I would rather use your solution (which is also written in Rust). The thing display/login managers have going for them is they allow certain configuration before logging in, or they show certain information before logging in. Whatever you want to configure or display depends (mostly on preference). Thinking about it, I am not sure I need anything. I mean, all I do is type sway.
- nerdponx 4y ago
  Another good alternative is Emptty.
1MachineElf 4y ago
Maybe this will be helpful. https://youtu.be/JwudRbgLTNQ?start=438 https://youtu.be/JwudRbgLTNQ?start=438

seqizz 4y ago

I envy nice display managers, they're the nostalgia for me. I'm not using one for a long time, thanks to disk encryption and auto-login.

rgoulter 4y ago
> disk encryption and auto-login. How does this work? I'd think that auto-login is a convenience that reduces security, and disk encryption would only be meaningful with some factor of authentication?
- Lester_Square 4y ago
  You need to enter the key to decrypt the disk during the boot process, so having another password just to login is slightly unnecessary unless you have multiple users on the device
  - francoispon 4y ago
    i wanted to do this too, but I have to enter my password to unlock my key manager (ie: seahorse on gnome), any way to work around this?

ducktective 4y ago

1- Tangential, Why "login manager" is called display manager in Linux-speak? 2- Isn't it better to use a login manager that is 1- graphical and 2- uses the same GUI tech as your DE (for example gtk for xfce/gnome and qt for KDE) so the actual GUI apps could be hot-loaded in memory and the initial cold-runs of programs could be faster? Thanks for the project. Seems clean.

rcthompson 4y ago
1. I think the term comes from X11 jargon, where each login session is associated with a display (the thing described by the contents of `$DISPLAY`.
1MachineElf 4y ago
I'm interested in trying this out with i3. I've only just started using i3 and the default lightdm display manager (on NixOS) looks and feels out-of-place with it. Ly seems to be a logical next step.
- doubled112 4y ago
  Are you the only user? Do you always use i3? If yes to both, you could have your bashrc (or you shell's equivalent) start X and i3 on a TTY login? https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Xinit#Autostart_X_at_login https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Xinit#Autostart_X_at_login
  - LargoLasskhyfv 4y ago
    An even more lazy approach is logging into the console, regardless if textmode or framebuffer, and simply do upward arrow & enter, since whatever starts your session is the last entry in shell history anyways :-) This way there is less surprise/annoyance with flickering/crashing X, like you could have when starting X unconditionally after login, which could happen after you modified something to test. On another console, to not spoil the history for that upward arrow & enter thing ;-) Which works regardless of shell/WM/DE/OS/whatever, at least it does so for me.
  - 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

nickloewen 4y ago

I made a quick survey of text-based display managers a couple days ago. Ly looks fantastic, but I went with tbsm, which had almost no dependencies and was super simple to get going. https://github.com/loh-tar/tbsm https://github.com/loh-tar/tbsm http://loh-tar.github.io/tbsm/ http://loh-tar.github.io/tbsm/

russellendicott 4y ago
If you like TUIs I'd love to get some feeback on a project I just parked called Uggly. It's like a browser but for TUI's served by servers. http://uggly.bytester.net http://uggly.bytester.net

this_is_eline 4y ago

It 'just works', but its so 'ligth' with features that you might as well use xinit with startx.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]