The Ly display manager

Ly is a lightweight TUI (ncurses-like) display manager for Linux and BSD, designed with portability in mind (e.g. it does not require systemd to run).

Join us on Matrix over at #ly:envs.net!

Note: Development happens on Codeberg with a mirror on GitHub.

Dependencies

• Compile-time:
  • zig 0.14.x
  • libc
  • pam
  • xcb (optional, required by default; needed for X11 support)
• Runtime (with default config):
  • xorg
  • xorg-xauth
  • shutdown
  • brightnessctl

Debian

# apt install build-essential libpam0g-dev libxcb-xkb-dev xauth xserver-xorg brightnessctl

Fedora

Warning: You may encounter issues with SELinux on Fedora. It is recommended to add a rule for Ly as it currently does not ship one.

# dnf install kernel-devel pam-devel libxcb-devel zig xorg-x11-xauth xorg-x11-server brightnessctl

Packaging status

Support

Ly has been tested with a wide variety of desktop environments and window managers, all of which you can find in the sections below:

Wayland environments

X11 environments

Manually building

The procedure for manually building Ly is pretty standard:

$ git clone https://codeberg.org/fairyglade/ly.git
$ cd ly
$ zig build

After building, you can (optionally) test Ly in a terminal emulator, although authentication will not work:

$ zig build run

Important: While you can also run Ly in a terminal emulator as root, it is not recommended either. If you want to properly test Ly, please enable its service (as described below) and reboot your machine.

The following sections show how to install Ly for a particular init system. Because the procedure is very similar for all of them, the commands will only be detailed for the first section (which is about systemd).

Note: All following sections will assume you are using LightDM for convenience sake.

systemd

Now, you can install Ly on your system:

# zig build installexe -Dinit_system=systemd

Note: The init_system parameter is optional and defaults to systemd.

Note that you also need to disable your current display manager. For example, if LightDM is the current display manager, you can execute the following command:

# systemctl disable lightdm.service

Then, similarly to the previous command, you need to enable the Ly service:

# systemctl enable ly.service

Important: Because Ly runs in a TTY, you must disable the TTY service that Ly will run on, otherwise bad things will happen. For example, to disable getty spawning on TTY 2 (the default TTY on which Ly spawns), you need to execute the following command:

# systemctl disable getty@tty2.service

You can change the TTY Ly will run on by editing the tty option in the configuration file and change which TTY is used in the corresponding service file..

OpenRC

# zig build installexe -Dinit_system=openrc
# rc-update del lightdm
# rc-update add ly
# rc-update del agetty.tty2

Note: On Gentoo specifically, you also must comment out the appropriate line for the TTY in /etc/inittab.

runit

# zig build installexe -Dinit_system=runit
# rm /var/service/lightdm
# ln -s /etc/sv/ly /var/service/
# rm /var/service/agetty-tty2

s6

# zig build installexe -Dinit_system=s6
# s6-rc -d change lightdm
# s6-service add default ly-srv
# s6-db-reload
# s6-rc -u change ly-srv

To disable TTY 2, edit /etc/s6/config/tty2.conf and set SPAWN="no".

dinit

# zig build installexe -Dinit_system=dinit
# dinitctl disable lightdm
# dinitctl enable ly

To disable TTY 2, go to /etc/dinit.d/config/console.conf and modify ACTIVE_CONSOLES.

Updating

You can also install Ly without overrding the current configuration file. This is called updating. To update, simply run:

# zig build installnoconf

You can, of course, still select the init system of your choice when using this command.

Configuration

You can find all the configuration in /etc/ly/config.ini. The file is fully commented, and includes the default values.

Controls

Use the Up/Down arrow keys to change the current field, and the Left/Right arrow keys to scroll through the different fields (whether it be the info line, the desktop environment, or the username). The info line is where messages and errors are displayed.

A note on .xinitrc

If your .xinitrc file doesn't work ,make sure it is executable and includes a shebang. This file is supposed to be a shell script! Quoting from xinit's man page:

If no specific client program is given on the command line, xinit will look for a file in the user's home directory called .xinitrc to run as a shell script to start up client programs.

A typical shebang for a shell script looks like this:

#!/bin/sh

Tips

• The numlock and capslock state is printed in the top-right corner.
• Use the F1 and F2 keys to respectively shutdown and reboot.
• Take a look at your .xsession file if X doesn't start, as it can interfere (this file is launched with X to configure the display properly).

Supported Wayland environments

• budgie
• cosmic
• deepin
• enlightenment
• gnome
• hyprland
• kde
• labwc
• niri
• pantheon
• sway
• weston

Supported X11 environments

• awesome
• bspwm
• budgie
• cinnamon
• dwm
• enlightenment
• gnome
• kde
• leftwm
• lxde
• mate
• maxx
• pantheon
• qwm
• spectrwm
• windowmaker
• xfce
• xmonad

A final note

The name "Ly" is a tribute to the fairy from the game Rayman. Ly was tested by oxodao, who is some seriously awesome dude.