Although no one has ever asked, I have become quite enamored by the look & feel of elegant minimalist Terminal User Interface (TUI) tools. Even if they don’t ‘actually’ run faster, I think they look like they should run faster. The bottom line is I like doing things that please me aesthetically, and Linux let’s me do those. Some people call that type of system tweaking ‘ricing’ their system; I just see it as being fun.
Recently I have switched to a little known but fun Debian-based distro called LiliDog. I use LilDog as a sid (unstable Debian) variant. (Note: For those in who care, sid works like a rolling release.)
Because I want my Display Manager (DM) to utilize a minimalist TUI style, I elected to implement ‘Ly’ as my DM. For those of you unfamiliar with Ly, here is its GitHub page. Briefly:
Ly is a lightweight TUI (ncurses-like) display manager for Linux and BSD.
Here is what it looks like (don’t expect Hollywood or Bollywood glitz.)
You may obtain their standard installation instructions on the GitHub page mentioned above. What I have created here is an edited version of the standard instructions with customizations and minor error corrections for use on systemd based Debian distros.
Vanilla Debian based distro (eg. LiliDog) Ly Installation
On Debian-based distros install the following using sudo:
sudo apt install build-essential libpam0g-dev libxcb-xkb-dev
This should install all Debian required dependencies for you.
From this point, I assume you are using systemd as your init:
- Clone the Ly GitHub repository:
git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/fairyglade/ly
- Change to the ly directory
cd ly
- Compile Ly
make
- Test in the configured tty (tty2 by default) or a terminal emulator (but desktop environments won’t start)
# make run
- Install Ly and the provided systemd service file
# make install installsystemd
- Disable existing display manager (example for lightdm)
# systemctl disable lightdm.service
- Enable ly service
systemctl enable ly.service
- Reboot your system and you should have the newly installed ly display manager.
The above worked for me on a Debian Unstable (sid) Distro (LilDog). As noted earlier, the process I followed is a derivative of that contain on the GitHub page for ly.
Remember, like with all of my work, I am able to provide the following assurance(s):
- It is almost certainly going to work until it breaks; although I have to admit it may never work and that would be sad.
- When/if it does break, you may keep all of the pieces.
- If you find my materials helpful, both you & I will be happy, at least for a little while.
- My advice is worth every penny you paid for it!
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