Looking for a 'screensaver' (animated framebuffer graphics, not just blanking) on a X-less system for the console

emk2203

8/18/24, 3:06 PM

I have a small Ubuntu 23.04 system without X11 or Wayland (server edition) where I want an oldschool screensaver in the text console.

Is there any program in the Ubuntu distribution which can achieve this? I know of the possibility to have a slideshow of pictures with fbi, feh or fim, but I'm looking more for starfield simulation, fireworks or generally any xsceensaver-like visuals.

If this is not available, I would settle for a guide to blank the console and unblank on a key press.

1 + 0

screensaver

Score:1

Ubuntu

Artur Meinild

8/19/24, 10:31 PM

If you're using tmux, you can set a command to run after some time. A popular choice would be cmatrix, which emulates the digital rain of characters from the Matrix movies.

Set the following in your tmux config:

set -g lock-after-time 5
set -g lock-command "cmatrix; vlock"

This means that after 5 minutes of inactivity, the screensaver starts, first by running the cmatrix command, and then followed by the vlock command, which prompts for your password.

It goes without saying that you need to install both cmatrix and vlock first:

sudo apt install cmatrix vlock

You could also drop cmatrix entirely, and go directly to vlock, which clears the screen and prompts for password.

Also see here for suggestions for other ASCII screensaver programs.

+ 4

emk2203

8/20/24, 12:28 PM

I need to test it, but wouldn't `vlock` automatically clear also `cmatrix` output? I tried with `vlock` already, but it did put out a static text which was not desirable.

Artur Meinild

8/20/24, 12:57 PM

No, `vlock` does not run until `cmatrix` have exited - it works as expected. You can also skip `vlock` if you don't need to lock the terminal.

emk2203

8/20/24, 3:09 PM

Although I forgot to specifically ask for it, do you have any link to a non-ASCII (framebuffer) screensaver? Since modern consoles are able to put out graphics, it would be nice to use this.

Artur Meinild

8/20/24, 4:00 PM

Sorry, I'm not aware of any such screensaver application.

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EN: Looking for a 'screensaver' (animated framebuffer graphics, not just blanking) on a X-less system for the console

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