2025-04-18

homepage.content

@@ -1050,6 +1050,92 @@ pre { /* DRY who? */
 }
 
 
+/blah/2025-04-18.html
+
+: X without the WM
+
+I use a netbook for /only/ SShing into this CM4 uConsole. The netbook runs
+NetBSD/i386 and my usual behavior is something like
+
+sanichi$ ssh laika.lan
+  laika$ tmux
+
+which works well for me, except for fancy UTF-8 TUI programs, which look ugly,
+because the NetBSD tty(4) supports ASCII only (as far as I know, though I did
+check the manual).
+
+I don't want windows or decorations, I don't want clocks or status bars, I just
+want tmux in a terminal window. I'm going to achieve this using xinit(1) (which
+comes with the full NetBSD system) and xdotool(1).
+
+# pkgin install xdotool
+
+This command assumes the use of pkgsrc; adapt it to other package managers if
+need be. I don't know much about modular-xorg so you may need to futz a bit to
+find xinit(1).
+
+$ cd; vi .xinitrc
+
+And here's the entire .xinitrc:
+
+xdotool search --sync --class xterm windowsize 100% 100% & exec xterm
+
+Not bad for 80B, eh? Let's chart it out:
+
+xdotool                        ; xdotool(1) - command-line X11 automation tool
+	search                 ; Find a certain window.
+		--sync         ; Wait until it's found.
+		--class xterm  ; It calls itself "xterm". When you find it,
+	windowsize             ; resize it.
+		100%           ; Make it fill the view horizontally.
+		100%           ; Make it fill the view vertically.
+	&                      ; Don't wait for this command to finish before
+                               ; starting the next one.
+exec                           ; Start this next program in the X server, and
+                               ; when it finishes, close the X server.
+	xterm                  ; xterm(1) - terminal emulator for X
+
+I can exit X by either sending an EOF (that's ^D) from xterm(1) or, if it
+freezes, switching to ttyE0 and sending a ^C to the running X server.
+
+I initially passed xterm(1) `-e tmux` to start tmux, but I've found I still
+prefer to SSh into laika before starting tmux, so all my terminals are remote
+(one for mail, one for writing, one for debugging, one for man pages).
+
+I did add `xrdb -load ~/.Xresources` before the xdotool(1)/xterm(1) line, so
+xterm(1) would load with my preferred color scheme which I've already
+configured (also see X(7)). I thought this might be automatic, but on here it's
+not.
+
+I'm finishing this blah post on my netbook running NetBSD/i386 and an X11
+server, in which xterm(1) is running, in which ssh(1) is running, connected to
+my uConsole across the room, on which tmux(1) is running, in which nvim(1) is
+running. The UTF-8 is beautiful and bat(1) (a guilty pleasure of mine) looks
+good.
+
+If I was going to use this computer for anything more than terminals, I'd just
+use a window manager. I thought about using sxhkd(1) for this task but it
+ultimately proved to be unnecessary.
+
+I added the following to my $ENV (see sh(1)):
+
+# Don't start X if I'm on a framebuffer kick or am in tmux(1) (or screen(1)).
+if test -z "$NO_WM" && ! test "$TERM" = screen
+	then case "$0" in
+		-*) startx ;; # Do start X if I'm in a login shell
+		              # (see bash(1)).
+	esac
+fi
+
+Which seems to work well. If it failed dreadfully I could reboot and login as
+root.
+
+I don't have much more to say. Don't be scared of X - in conjunction with
+xinit(1) and startx(1) it's quite easy to use. Don't be scared of Wayland
+either - it may not yet run well on NetBSD, but if you get a chance to try it,
+you might really like it.
+
+
 /blah/2025-04-05.html
 
 My habitual "the story so far" was long delayed because I didn't remember what