[HN Gopher] Ly - A TUI Display Manager
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       Ly - A TUI Display Manager
        
       Author : maydemir
       Score  : 48 points
       Date   : 2022-05-21 16:00 UTC (7 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | seqizz wrote:
       | 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.
        
       | this_is_eline wrote:
       | It 'just works', but its so 'ligth' with features that you might
       | as well use xinit with startx.
        
       | ducktective wrote:
       | 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.
        
         | sainotbot wrote:
         | 1: You can login and not start up a display (e.g. when you SSH
         | into a box). The login manager is seperate from the display
         | manager. You don't necessarily have to have a display attached.
         | 
         | 2: The display manager starts up a window manager, which
         | figures out where to draw your apps. X11 or Wayland is the
         | underlying tech that KDE, Gnome, etc, uses to manage
         | displays/windows.
         | 
         | Ly draws straight to the terminal, which I'm pretty sure is
         | faster. And it allows some flexibility when running multiple
         | window managers. I've found having multiple window managers
         | installed can be a little unstable. SDDM didn't like it, but it
         | works pretty good with Ly.
        
         | 1MachineElf wrote:
         | 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 wrote:
           | 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
        
             | LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
             | 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.
        
         | squarefoot wrote:
         | > 2- Isn't it better to use a login manager that is 1-
         | graphical and 2- uses the same GUI tech as your DE
         | 
         | A text only login manager could spare some more resources on
         | small systems, since once the desktop environment has been
         | loaded it keeps running anyway. I use LightDM and XFCE for
         | example, and if I look at LightDM memory consumption, the
         | amount although not huge is neither trivial; I guess small
         | embedded devices would benefit from this.                 $
         | sudo pmap `pidof lightdm`            2021:   lightdm --session-
         | child 14 23       000055728c276000     28K r---- lightdm
         | 000055728c27d000    168K r-x-- lightdm       000055728c2a7000
         | 76K r---- lightdm       ....       ....        total
         | 163696K       1795:   /usr/sbin/lightdm       0000555cca10b000
         | 28K r---- lightdm       0000555cca112000    168K r-x-- lightdm
         | 0000555cca13c000     76K r---- lightdm       ....       ....
         | total           236188K
        
         | ayushnix wrote:
         | > 2- Isn't it better to use a login manager that is 1-
         | graphical and 2- uses the same GUI tech as your DE
         | 
         | You're assuming everyone using Linux uses a DE.
        
         | rcthompson wrote:
         | 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`.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | gigatexal wrote:
       | Anyone got video of this in action?
        
         | filmor wrote:
         | Knowing the alternative 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 wrote:
           | 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 wrote:
           | Another good alternative is Emptty.
        
         | 1MachineElf wrote:
         | Maybe this will be helpful.
         | 
         | https://youtu.be/JwudRbgLTNQ?start=438
        
       | nickloewen wrote:
       | 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
       | 
       | http://loh-tar.github.io/tbsm/
        
         | russellendicott wrote:
         | 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
        
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       (page generated 2022-05-21 23:01 UTC)