An awesome app called Qingy (Part 1)

Message

Chickpea · Post by **Chickpea** » Sun Aug 03, 2003 2:14 am

A few weeks ago, I was looking for a way to jazz up a script someone here did for choosing which window manger to use. I wanted to have something that used the framebuffer since I was using the bootsplash...I just love eye candy

What I found was an application called Qingy

What it is: a replacement for getty that allows users to choose which session they want wether it be a text console or one of the gazillion window managers we have to choose from. What is really cool is you can also power off or reset your system from this window...just like the ever popular display managers like kdm or gdm. xdm doesnt offer this kind of function

It uses DirectFB so you dont have to install an insane number of libs. You have to try this out. It is easy to setup and I know you will enjoy it.

Although I am going on and on about this, I assure you that I am not in anyway connected with this program other than liking it. The author is a Gentoo user and there is a ebuild for it at the site: Qingy So please check it out

(Part 1 added to the title when part 2 was created - NeddySeagoon)

Chickpea · Post by **Chickpea** » Sun Aug 03, 2003 2:41 pm

I forgot to mention that it also does work with the bootsplash. So you dont have to choose one or the other. You will get your nice bootsplash background picture once you log in.

Gotta love eye candy

MmmmJoel · Post by **MmmmJoel** » Sun Aug 03, 2003 4:34 pm

It's unfortunate that the author is using a copyrighted work from digitalblasphemy.com. He even stripped out the digitalblasphemy line from the bottom-right and doesn't even extend credit to the author. Bah.

skunk · Post by **skunk** » Sun Aug 03, 2003 5:21 pm

does work well only with 640x480 for me, on a 1024x768 fb resolution with a same size bg image, textes are not centered and the image doesn't fit the entire screen (shows up under scaled in the center of the screen)

Post by **pjp** » Sun Aug 03, 2003 5:25 pm

MmmmJoel wrote:It's unfortunate that the author is using a copyrighted work from digitalblasphemy.com. He even stripped out the digitalblasphemy line from the bottom-right and doesn't even extend credit to the author. Bah.

Perhaps worth droping a note to the folks at digitalblasphemy?

skunk · Post by **skunk** » Sun Aug 03, 2003 5:34 pm

MmmmJoel wrote:It's unfortunate that the author is using a copyrighted work from digitalblasphemy.com. He even stripped out the digitalblasphemy line from the bottom-right and doesn't even extend credit to the author. Bah.

the mushrooms image appear just in the screenshoots, it's not present in the application itself...
don't know about the ant picture which indeed is included...

Chickpea · Post by **Chickpea** » Sun Aug 03, 2003 6:02 pm

The default theme in the actual application is not the one from digital blasphemy. I am sure that when he was developing it and testing it out, that is what he used.

As far as the resolution thing....I had the same concern until I made an /etc/directfbrc file otherwise, directfb (which is what qingy uses) will use the first mode in /etc/fb.modes

my directfbrc file has this line

mode=1024x768

It helps alot.

skunk · Post by **skunk** » Sun Aug 03, 2003 6:20 pm

Chickpea wrote: As far as the resolution thing....I had the same concern until I made an /etc/directfbrc file otherwise, directfb (which is what qingy uses) will use the first mode in /etc/fb.modes

my directfbrc file has this line

mode=1024x768

It helps alot.

directfb is already configured on 1024x768...
i've moved the 1024 mode in /etc/fb.modes on the top of the file instead of creating a /etc/directfbrc file (i didn't know about this possibility)
imho, seems that qingy is still unable to scale to different resolutions
or maybe i'm missing something

Chickpea · Post by **Chickpea** » Sun Aug 03, 2003 6:24 pm

well, i made the directfbrc file because in the /etc/fb.modes file it said to put DirectFb video modes in /etc. I assumed that was directfbrc

puddpunk · Post by **puddpunk** » Sun Aug 03, 2003 10:38 pm

MmmmJoel wrote:It's unfortunate that the author is using a copyrighted work from digitalblasphemy.com. He even stripped out the digitalblasphemy line from the bottom-right and doesn't even extend credit to the author. Bah.

He could have a membership which, IIRC, allows him to use those images in his programs/websites.

pjp wrote:Perhaps worth droping a note to the folks at digitalblasphemy?

I don't know what the singular of "folks" is, but digitalblasphemy.com is run by the one guy. He's earning enough to make a living off it now

Anyway, back on topic, this looks really interesting. I'm thinking of aquiring a laptop, but i want to wait until I can run KDE on top of XDirectFB, and I could have this as the display manager. I realise I'll be waiting a long time, but X is getting on my nerves a bit

yagami · Post by **yagami** » Mon Aug 04, 2003 1:23 am

i kinda think this is impossible with nvidia X accelarated drivers.

although with xfree drivers it should work.

last time i tried even with vesa fb drivers , crashed nvidia drivers when doing anything else that text ( fbi, fbtv , etc )

IWBCMAN · Post by **IWBCMAN** » Mon Aug 04, 2003 7:20 am

First off I want to second the original post-

This program is great.

With this you can disable xdm/kdm/gdm and still get a graphical login-which even allows you to do a console login-unlike the others. It is fast and simple. I immediately created my own backgorund image, a modified version of my bootsplash image. This is a really cool ittle app.

I did have to fight with directfb a little to get everything working. When I first tried it I ended up with a 640x480 box in the middle of my 1280x1024 framebuffer screen. The background image appeared inside that box -yet the rest of the screen had no background-and when I moved the mouse over it I eneded up with unerasable mousetrails and the text would overwrite itself until becomming utterly illegible. So I mucked and mucked around until I figured out what was going on. My solution was to create a /etc/directfbrc file with mode=1280x1024. I had already tried to change the oder in /etc/fb.modes-to no avail. I do still get a strange warning about directfb not being able to switch resolutions. And yes I have vesa framebuffer support compiled into the kernel and yes I am using a NVIDIA graphics card(Geforce 4 440).....

I may be mistaken but I believe this uses a lot less memory than gdm or kdm and it is really fast...I did an rc-update del xdm and my system comes up with a sweet graphical login in a fraction of the time that gdm or kdm needs to get up and running....

I set up my virtual consoles to use qinty, leaving only vc 6 as normal. This means I can launch xfce4 from vc 1, gnome from vc2 and kde from vc3 and e17 from vc 4 without mucking with gdmflexiserver or exporting displays and fighting with .xinitrc.

All I can say is wow.......

Chickpea · Post by **Chickpea** » Mon Aug 04, 2003 9:13 am

IWBCMAN WROTE

The background image appeared inside that box -yet the rest of the screen had no background-and when I moved the mouse over it I eneded up with unerasable mousetrails and the text would overwrite itself until becomming utterly illegible. So I mucked and mucked around until I figured out what was going on. My solution was to create a /etc/directfbrc

Hey you copied me

That was my solution too. Works very nice. I am so obsessed with the program now. I have been experimenting making themes etc...I wish I was an artist and could make my own wallpapers and art etc.

currently I have borrowed my favorite gdm theme: crystal rose. It is so wonderful...

and yes, it is fast and takes up less of a memory footprint.

slymonkey · Post by **slymonkey** » Mon Aug 04, 2003 5:33 pm

This looks pretty cool, but it only segfaults on me... sigh

slymonkey · Post by **slymonkey** » Mon Aug 04, 2003 7:53 pm

re-emerged it, made sure that inittab was correct, made /etc/directfbrc, and all is working properly now!

very cool!

ZeroDivide · Post by **ZeroDivide** » Tue Aug 05, 2003 3:13 pm

Has anyone noticed that when using Qingy their usb joystick stops working?
This could be unrelated but before Quingy my joystick was working fine and after I can cat /dev/js0 and see output but no apps can use my joystick.
Maybe this is a problem with DirectFB?

Chickpea · Post by **Chickpea** » Tue Aug 05, 2003 5:12 pm

I dont use a joy stick so I cant help you there.

You are speaking of after you have logged in using quingy right?

Verteron · Post by **Verteron** » Tue Aug 05, 2003 5:38 pm

This is nice. If I didn't have an explicit need to run XDMCP I'd use it

.

ZeroDivide · Post by **ZeroDivide** » Tue Aug 05, 2003 6:49 pm

Chickpea wrote:I dont use a joy stick so I cant help you there.

You are speaking of after you have logged in using quingy right?

yes.. After I log in using qingy no applications are able to use my joystick. The error I get is something like "Cannot open /dev/js0"

But if I log in normaly ( without running qingy ) all my applications will use the joystick.

anfpunk · Post by **anfpunk** » Tue Aug 05, 2003 8:19 pm

I haven't actually set this up yet(been too busy) but I do have everything installed and the initab edited, just haven't been home yet. However, is there a way to look your desktop without using xscreensaver or something and have it just go back to qingy but only allow the locked user the ability to login? Kinda how you lock a windows machine where it locks it but takes it basically to your login screen.

slickquickyb · Post by **slickquickyb** » Tue Aug 05, 2003 8:30 pm

what button is the function button ( Fn ) havent been able to figure that out ... my keyboard is a microsoft natural keyboard. Thanks in advance.

Chickpea · Post by **Chickpea** » Tue Aug 05, 2003 8:35 pm

what button is the function button ( Fn ) havent been able to figure that out ... my keyboard is a microsoft natural keyboard

Those would be the F1, F2, F3 etc keys along the top. it is what allows you to switch to different consoles.

slickquickyb · Post by **slickquickyb** » Tue Aug 05, 2003 8:41 pm

thanks ... i knew it had to be really simple

Saruman · Post by **Saruman** » Tue Aug 05, 2003 9:39 pm

Ok, if I log using a qingy terminal and start KDE I artsd (KDE sound server) cannot open /dev/dsp (permission denied). Starting with the usual getty make it works.
I guess that must be a pam problem: any help?

Chickpea · Post by **Chickpea** » Wed Aug 06, 2003 12:21 am

Ok, if I log using a qingy terminal and start KDE I artsd (KDE sound server) cannot open /dev/dsp (permission denied). Starting with the usual getty make it works.
I guess that must be a pam problem: any help?

I am not sure how much help I really will be....but I was wondering when you start kde are you just using startx where startx looks to your .xinitrc file?

Anyway, what I was wondering was if startkde was a shell script that maybe sets permissions to the user. or if it just points to a bin file. Because what I noticed is that qingy chooses sessions based on what is in the /etc/X11/Sessions directory. What ever is written in that session file for a particular window manager is what happens.....sooooo what I was thinking is that maybe the startkde script (if it actually is a script) is differnent from the instructions in the session file for kde. Make sense?

I was playing around today with my fluxbox session file and now I have it playing a sound when I log in...still playing around with it.

Anyway, maybe this will help or at least give you a place to start[/quote]

An awesome app called Qingy (Part 1)

An awesome app called Qingy (Part 1)

nvidia

Permission problem with /dev/dsp