(#2726vfq) st tries not to redraw immediately after new data arrives:

https://git.suckless.org/st/file/x.c.html#l1984

The exact timings are configurable.

This is the PR that changed the timing in VTE recently (2023):

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/vte/-/issues/2678

There is a long discussion. It’s not a trivial problem, especially not in the context of GTK and multiple competing terminal widgets. st dodges all these issues (for various reasons).

Something happened with the frame rate of terminal emulators lately. It looks like there’s a trend to run at a high framerate now? I’m not sure exactly. This can be seen in VTE-based terminals like my xiate or XTerm on Wayland. foot and st, on the other hand, are fine.

My shell prompt and cursor look like this:

$ █

When I keep Enter pressed, I expect to see several lines like so:

$
$
$
$
$
$
$ █

With the affected terminal emulators, the lines actually show up in the following sequence. First, we have the original line:

$ █

Pressing Enter yields this as the next frame:

$
█

And then eventually this:

$
$ █

In other words, you can see the cursor jumping around very quickly, all the time.

Another example: Vim actually shows which key you just pressed in the bottom right corner. Keeping j pressed to scroll through a file means I get to see a j flashing rapidly now.

(I have no idea yet, why exactly XTerm in X11 is fine but flickering in Wayland.)

The WM_CLASS Property is used on X11 to assign rules to certain windows, e.g. “this is a GIMP window, it should appear on workspace number 16.” It consists of two fields, name and class.

Wayland (or rather, the XDG shell protocol – core Wayland knows nothing about this) only has a single field called app_id.

When you run X11 programs under Wayland, you use XWayland, which is baked into most compositors. Then you have to deal with all three fields.

Some compositors map name to app_id, others map class to app_id, and even others directly expose the original name and class.

Apparently, there is no consensus.

(#g77p7fq) Yeah, little fellow. I also just want to walk away. https://movq.de/v/bef8c35f01/ach.mp4

“🫩” is my new favorite emoji.

(#cfv7cqa) @lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Yeah, if there’s no stable API, then it’s not a lot of fun … Bah. :|

(#rwueaza) … but you can’t set SDL_VIDEODRIVER=wayland globally, because that breaks Wine again …

(#rwueaza) … okay, the SDL backend works if you also set SDL_VIDEODRIVER=wayland.

(#l4jz2na) @lyse@lyse.isobeef.org dmenu is a great example.

There have been several attempts at porting dmenu from X11 to Wayland. Well, not exactly “porting” it, more like rewriting it from scratch. Turns out: It’s not that easy.

dmenu is super fast and reliable. None of the Wayland rewrites are (at least none of the popular ones that I know of). They are either bloated and/or slow.

It takes a lot of discipline and restraint to write simple software and not blow up the codebase. This is much harder than people think. It’s a form of art, really.

(#cfv7cqa) @lyse@lyse.isobeef.org I do my timetracking in a little Python script, locally. Every now and then, I push the data to our actual service. Problem solved – but it’s a completely unpopular approach, they all want to use the web site. I don’t get it. Then, of course, when it’s down, shit hits the fan. (Luckily, our timetracking software is neither developed nor run by us anymore. It’s a silly cloud service, but the upside is that I’m not responsible anymore. 🤷)

Some of our oldschool devs tried to roll out local timetracking once, about 15 years ago. I don’t remember anymore why they failed …

This is developed inhouse, I’m just so glad that we’re not a software engineering company. Oh wait. How embarrassing.

Oh to be anonymous on the internet. That must be nice. 😅

(#rwueaza) … but the SDL backend is broken as well, albeit differently …

(#rwueaza) … which is probably a GTK bug.

QEMU on Wayland unusable, because it can’t grab the mouse … I’ll add it to my TODO list and investigate/report it eventually.

(#hdfz6xa) @prologic@twtxt.net Yeah, this really could use a proper definition or a “manifest”. 😅 Many of these ideas are not very wide spread. And I haven’t come across similar projects in all these years.

Let’s take the farbfeld image format as an example again. I think this captures the “spirit” quite well, because this isn’t even about code.

This is the entire farbfeld spec:

farbfeld is a lossless image format which is easy to parse, pipe and compress. It has the following format:

╔════════╤═════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╗
║ Bytes  │ Description                                             ║
╠════════╪═════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╣
║ 8      │ "farbfeld" magic value                                  ║
╟────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╢
║ 4      │ 32-Bit BE unsigned integer (width)                      ║
╟────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╢
║ 4      │ 32-Bit BE unsigned integer (height)                     ║
╟────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╢
║ [2222] │ 4x16-Bit BE unsigned integers [RGBA] / pixel, row-major ║
╚════════╧═════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╝

The RGB-data should be sRGB for best interoperability and not alpha-premultiplied.

(Now, I don’t know if your screen reader can work with this. Let me know if it doesn’t.)

I think these are some of the properties worth mentioning:

• The spec is extremely short. You can read this in under a minute and fully understand it. That alone is gold.
  
• There are no “knobs”: It’s just a single version, it’s not like there’s also an 8-bit color depth version and one for 16-bit and one for extra large images and one that supports layers and so on. This makes it much easier to implement a fully compliant program.
  
• Despite being so simple, it’s useful. I’ve used it in various programs, like my window manager, my status bars, some toy programs like “tuxeyes” (an Xeyes variant), or Advent of Code.
  
• The format does not include compression because it doesn’t need to. Just use something like bzip2 to get file sizes similar to PNG.
  
• It doesn’t cover every use case under the sun, but it does cover the most important ones (imho). They have discussed using something other than RGBA and decided it’s not worth the trouble.
  
• They refrained from adding extra baggage like metadata. It would have needlessly complicated things.

(#hdfz6xa) @prologic@twtxt.net Hm, I wouldn’t say that. Go code could fall into that category as well.

Maybe this topic could use a blog post / article, that explains what it’s about. I’m finding it hard to really define what “suckless-like software” is. 🤔 (Their own philosophy focuses too much on elitism, if you ask me.)

(#hdfz6xa) @prologic@twtxt.net Ah, I’m referring to software that’s similar to that of suckless.org: Small, minimal codebases, small tools, but still useful. dmenu is probably the best example and also farbfeld.

Here’s the author of Anubis talking about some of their experiences:

https://xeiaso.net/blog/why-i-use-suckless-tools-2020-06-05/

(You can skip the long config and keybinds part.)

The lack of suckless-like simple, hackable software these days is appalling.

The Linux installation on my main PC turned 14 today:

$ head -n 1 /var/log/pacman.log
[2011-07-07 11:19] installed filesystem (2011.04-1)

(#7upqiiq) @eldersnake@we.loveprivacy.club This wasn’t always the case, though. Quake3, Quake4, Unreal Tournament 99 and 2004 are examples of games that used to run very well as native Linux games. But that was 20+ years ago …

(#btx54va) @lyse@lyse.isobeef.org (It’s either that, or the fact that it’s women’s football and “nobody wants to see that anyway”.)

(#7upqiiq) In all fairness, GOG says that Forsaken is only supported on Ubuntu 16.04 – not current Arch Linux. If you ask me, this just goes to show that Linux is not a good platform for proprietary binary software.

Is it free software, do you have the source code? Then you’re good to go, things can be patched/updated (that can still be a lot of work). But proprietary binary blobs? Very bad idea.

I bought the “remastered” versions of Grim Fandango and Forsaken on GOG, because they’re super cheap at the moment. Both have native Linux versions.

And both these Linux version crap their pants. 🫤 The bundled SDL2 of Forsaken says it “can’t find a matching GLX visual” and I couldn’t figure out how to fix that. I didn’t spend a lot of time on Grim Fandango.

Both work great in Wine. 🤦

(I do have the original version of Grim Fandango from the 1990ies, but that one does not work so well in Wine. I figured, if it’s so cheap, why not. And I now get to play the english version. 😃 The german dub is pretty damn good, actually, but I always prefer the original these days.)

(#cfv7cqa) @lyse@lyse.isobeef.org I have to say, this sounds much worse than our stuff at work. 🫩 (We don’t use any Microsoft services, at least not for core tools.)

Okay, now this is a very interesting Rust feature:

https://blog.rust-lang.org/2025/07/03/stabilizing-naked-functions/

This (and inline assembly) makes Rust really interesting for very low-level stuff. 🥳

It took about a year, I think, but I’ve now finished another run of Tomb Raider I, II, and III. And I have, for the first time, played the two bonus packs “Unfinished Business” (for TR I) and “Golden Mask” (for TR II). They’re available as a free download, if you have the original games. (The bonus pack for TR III is not free.)

I just love these games – and the game mechanics. It’s just the right balance between challenging and relaxing.

https://movq.de/v/c55a2a137d/the%2Dend.jpg

What kind of half-assed nonsense is this? They only broadcast half of the current european soccer cup … (Let me guess, I’m supposed to subscribe to some streaming service if I want to watch every game, right?)

This aggressive auto-logout on my bank’s website …

Dude, you want me to print something, sign it, and scan it back in. This takes forever and I’ll have to re-login a dozen times. Narf.

(#cwjhpbq) @lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Uffpuh. Es Wetter spielt verrückt. 🫤

(#or4p7tq) @prologic@twtxt.net That too, yeah. 🥴😩

(#or4p7tq) @prologic@twtxt.net Bah! Why can’t we all have mild weather. 🥲

Is des äni Hitz!