
Cool but obscure X11 tools - navigaid
https://cyber.dabamos.de/unix/x11/
======
dahart
Boy does that bring back memories of the 1990s!

Some of these are not obscure at all, but absolutely standard. Xterm was _the_
shell, I’m not sure there were even alternatives in early X.
Xbiff+Xload+Xclock used to be on _everybody’s_ desktop. XV was the main image
viewer on X for a long time.

Anybody remember xvacuum? I guess it’s truly obscure since it didn’t make the
list. One of my favorite tricks to play on other people in the lab, before X
security was a thing, was to run xvacuum on other people’s displays ... it
slowly sucks everything on the screen into the mouse cursor.

If the page maintainer is reading, Xsnow has a calculator in the screenshot
covering the snow. This one is a bit obscure, but I loved xsnow, so I think it
deserves a calculator-less view! :)

~~~
app4soft
What about _AzPainter_?[0]

It's really cool image editor based on X11, that still is obscure competitor
to GIMP and Krita ;-)

[0]
[https://github.com/Symbian9/azpainter](https://github.com/Symbian9/azpainter)

~~~
leafo
This is a great program, essentially PaintTool SAI recreated for Linux

~~~
app4soft
> _recreated for Linux_

Not only for Linux, but for FreeBSD/OpenBSD and Mac OS too![0]

[0] [https://github.com/Symbian9/azpainter/wiki/Packaging-
status](https://github.com/Symbian9/azpainter/wiki/Packaging-status)

------
dexen
>XLennart is a modification of the arcade game XBill.

>An evil and unpopular computer hacker named “Lennart”[1] tries to install his
malicious init system on various BSD and Linux systems.

>Like in XBill, the player has to hit him and restore infected systems.

[1]
[https://cyber.dabamos.de/unix/x11/poettering.gif](https://cyber.dabamos.de/unix/x11/poettering.gif)

~~~
microcolonel
For clarity, Lennart Poettering is an extremely prolific guy that people
somehow love to hate. At the end of the day, his critics either use his
software begrudgingly, or use somebody else's to their own detriment, just to
spite him.

I take some time every year to thank Lennart for systemd and PulseAudio; I
remember when the grass was parched brown on my side, green has been a welcome
change!

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
After his foolish use of alloca() in systemd was revealed, it's clear that the
derision is well deserved. One would think that after cutting his teeth on
PulseAudio he'd have learned how to write safe, system level C.

~~~
Avamander
Please, it's not like any single other component in Linux desktop is somehow
more secure. If anything, most stuff on Linux desktops are majorly more
buggier and unsafe, they're just less popular in most cases.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
Desktop code can be expected to fail sometimes. Core system components that
orchestrate _everything_ , should not. Ever. This requires disciplined
programming that doesn't assume the stack is a limitless resource free to
abuse and fill with tainted data.

~~~
Avamander
Even Linux kernel has had tons and tons of vulnerabilities and bugs. Not to
mention non-systemd core system components and services have been found
exploitable times and times again. You can't set higher standards for systemd
than other core pieces of software, it's simply not fair.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
The Linux kernel _has_ high standards. Most of the bugs come from the drivers.
If systemd wants to be the end all be all init replacement it should have
known from the start that it needed to meet a high bar of code quality.

~~~
Avamander
It has high standards but the track record shows that standards isn't all it
takes. We can always blame some subcomponent under someone else's control but
the end result matters more.

If you want to systemd to adhere to really high standards then you're a
hypocrite if you don't apply the same standards to every subcomponent of a
non-systemd system, be it upstart, logrotated, cron, chrony or whatever else.

But it seems to me that you actually don't apply the same standards to the
alternatives, they've all been hit with some vunerabilities, they all have
bugs, they all have at least some terrible code, some lack maintenance or are
just outdated. I wouldn't start throwing rocks from a glass house.

Oh and let's not forget that based on a pure empirical observation of the
Linux ecosystem we can see that it is a better choice. And no, noone has been
forced to use it(, neither was anyone forced to use Pulseaudio).

~~~
craigsmansion
> standards isn't all it takes

Obviously, since djb's daemon tools isn't used by default, which is exactly
the sort of software that would be used by people who would rely on such
functionality.

> It has high standards

One of SystemD's core contributers was banned from contributing to Linus' tree
because his code was sub-standard.

> based on a pure empirical observation

...we should then also be able to see the Microsoft Windows operating system
is a better choice.

~~~
Avamander
> One of SystemD's core contributers was banned from contributing to Linus'
> tree because his code was sub-standard.

And how many contributors of other projects have even tried to contribute to
the kernel. 1 isn't a sample size you can make assumptions based on.

> ...we should then also be able to see the Microsoft Windows operating system
> is a better choice.

In certain cases it'd be delusional not to admit that.

------
throwamay1241
For those looking for obscure-but-useful, checkout xdotool. `sleep 2; xdotool
type "foo"` is super handy for typing passwords into virtual machines which
don't support guest additions. I'd rather not elaborate on the filthy things
I've made it do, but rest assured you can use it to do some quick and dirty
automation tasks if you really need to :)

~~~
Fnoord
Autokey (Python) gives you similar power as AutoHotKey on Windows and
Karabiner Elements/Hammerspoon on macOS.

Problem is, that you might want Wayland support, as X is on the way out.

[1] [https://github.com/autokey/autokey](https://github.com/autokey/autokey)

~~~
toxik
Last time I tried Karabiner Elements, it was quite buggy and brought down the
kernel. Not a happy camper. Then Apple blessed us with allowing Escape-Caps
remapping out of the box (guess that Touch Bar resulted in something
useful...)

Did it improve? What do you remap?

~~~
hibbelig
I've started using it a few months ago, and it seems pretty stable.

I've got a fancier mapping for the caps lock key: when you hold it, it works
like ctrl, and when you tap it it works like escape.

I've also got something similar for space: when I tap space, it works like
space. When I hold space, I can tap additional characters. (So space works
like a modifier, similar to ctrl or shift.) For example, space-x = delete,
space-p = page up, space-j = cursor down.

~~~
Fnoord
I'm using the same keybind as you do.

The space one however, did not work well for me. It resulted too frequently in
space not working at all. Supposedly it got matched as a combination with
another key instead of a tap.

I recommend to apply a new rule, then test it out, then make another change.
This way, you figure out which rule poses an issue.

There is one ruleset in Hammerspoon in the Github repo which I mentioned which
-for me- makes it impossible to type cd. It always becomes c d

------
pgtan
One BIG thing missing: xteddy! It was xteddy shown in parallel on multiple HP
9000 screens in the early 90ies, which sparked my love for UNIX.

[http://weber.itn.liu.se/~stegu/xteddy/](http://weber.itn.liu.se/~stegu/xteddy/)

see also

[https://xteddy.org/](https://xteddy.org/)

Also xon (very handy for non-ssh users), jwz's xdaliclock and xkeycaps.

~~~
folkhack
Oh man. This made my Friday - just an adorable bitmap bear on my Debian 10
desktop... get this - when you move him, the dragging cursor is a little heart
<3

Only problem is now I feel slightly guilty sending a teddy bear a SIGINT.

------
reirob
As well DDD the X11 front-end for GDB [1]. Helped me quite a lot around 2003.

[1] [https://www.gnu.org/software/ddd/](https://www.gnu.org/software/ddd/)

~~~
gmueckl
I still miss a good debugging GUI with useful data visualizations. Sometimes
staring at pointers and (multidimensional) arrays of numbers just isn't
enough.

~~~
Pete_D
For data visualizations I use gdb's Python API. For simple things that can be
just adding pretty printers, for hairy things it can be a custom command that
prints extra information or dumps it to a graphviz script.

[https://sourceware.org/gdb/onlinedocs/gdb/Python-
API.html](https://sourceware.org/gdb/onlinedocs/gdb/Python-API.html)

------
notacoward
My two favorites were xev, for finding out which key/event codes I needed to
put in config files, and xnest, for trying out new window managers or
containing window-happy applications in a single top-level window before
workspaces became a common thing.

~~~
ajross
Also xmag, for those "what is going on at the pixel level" questions that
screenshots are poor at answering. Alas, this doesn't work on wayland for
obvious (yet... deeply regrettable) security reasons.

~~~
natmaka
For Wayland there is now "wev"

[https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/wayland-
devel/2019-Au...](https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/wayland-
devel/2019-August/040796.html)

------
adrianmonk
Fun point of trivia about XBill: you might not guess from XBill's (ahem)
slick, beautiful user interface, but one of the two people who wrote XBill is
Matias Duarte.

Yes, that Matias Duarte, the guy in charge of UI for Android and who came up
with Material Design.

~~~
coribuci
There is not much of a GUI in XBill- just a bloody program with a menu and a
window. The same can be said about Android - Windows 1.0 rereleased. From an
engineering point of view XBill is a better achievement than the GUI of
Android.

------
mhd
Oh my, that reminds me of my first year with Linux, discovering all those
little utilities hidden on my Slackware install or available on Sunsite…

~~~
nineteen999
Same. Also the games listed here were pretty much the fanciest games we had,
apart from Doom (svgadoom and xdoom) and Abuse.

~~~
otabdeveloper4
What?? How could you forget xevil?

------
slu
Tgif is one of my all-time favorite X11 programs. It's used to create vector
drawings, and I could whip out nice infrastructure diagrams etc. so fast using
it.

See
[http://bourbon.usc.edu/tgif/index.html](http://bourbon.usc.edu/tgif/index.html)

------
bechampion
xeyes isn't obscure , how else do you test that ssh x forwarding works
otherwise :)

~~~
toxik
Glad to know I’m not the only one! That and glxgears.

~~~
jhbadger
Exactly. Glxgears was (at least traditionally) how you tested whether your
video driver was using any of the 3D acceleration!

------
p4bl0
I was expecting X11 tools such as xev, xdotool, wmctrl, etc. Not a list a more
or less obscure graphical programs (some stuff are even using GTK in the
list). Fun nonetheless.

------
sprash
Many of those types of programs like XRoach, XSnow, XNeko as well as every
program rendering to the root window will never be possible with wayland
(unless you built them into the display server).

~~~
rootbear
XRoach doesn't work even on a modern X desktop. The background window on, say,
gnome, isn't really the root window. I compiled XRoach a few years ago and
didn't understand at first why it wasn't working. I don't know if any of the
modern desktops have an actual root window that's visible.

~~~
zzo38computer
Perhaps if you do not use a desktop environment, then the root window will be
visible and usable. (I do not use a desktop environment myself.)

------
bump-ladel
The 1994 xv codebase still compiles and runs on modern Macs with XQuartz!
[https://twitter.com/jmcd/status/1143629189817470977?s=20](https://twitter.com/jmcd/status/1143629189817470977?s=20)

~~~
waynecochran
Yep. I still use it. I have a headless Amazon EC2 GPU instance that generates
images -- I tunnel X11 thru ssh and xv works like a charm!

------
Fnoord
TIL there is a successor to xbill, called xlennart.

------
jfhufl
xclip : [https://github.com/astrand/xclip](https://github.com/astrand/xclip)

    
    
        (long pipeline that generates lots of output) | xclip
    

Or even just

    
    
        xclip < /some/file
    

Now paste where necessary.

------
nailer
No x2x?

Control two separate networked computers with one keyboard and mouse. Cursor
slides out of right on one side and enters in on the left of the other.

Wayland folks is there a similar thing? I don't keep up with Linux desktop
tech anymore.

------
arethuza
XMosaic - I remember reading about that in '93 and thinking that it looked
like a cool hypertext browser but why would anyone want to load documents over
a network!

------
xvilka
Shameless plug - you can add also my tiny transset rewrite and enrichment -
set_opacity[1]. It allows making X windows translucent, without any
interaction required. Wrote it more than a decade ago, but still should be
usable. This is how you can use it:

set_opacity -o 0.5 -i `pgrep gkrellm`

There is also a patched[2] xcompmgr with the colored shadows support:

xcompmgr -fF -I-.002 -O-.003 -D6 -cC -t-5 -l-6 -r5 -R 1 -G 0.5333 -B 0

[1]
[https://github.com/XVilka/set_opacity/](https://github.com/XVilka/set_opacity/)

[2]
[http://xvilka.narod.ru/files/xcompmgr-1.1.2.tar.bz2](http://xvilka.narod.ru/files/xcompmgr-1.1.2.tar.bz2)

------
jhallenworld
Oh xfig is missing. I still use this awesome program for drawings. It's
primitive but in many ways faster to use than inkscape.

~~~
jordigh
xfig also has one of the few implementations of x-splines (x means "cross"
here, like "pedestrian xing", unrelated to the X window system). I find
x-splines very nice and intuitive.

Here's a little x-spline implementation I made:

[https://jordi.platinum.edu.pl/xsplines/splines.html](https://jordi.platinum.edu.pl/xsplines/splines.html)

------
machinecoffee
Ah Motif, XBill and Afterstep! My nostalgia bit just got set.

My first experiences of GUI programming on Unix (HPUX on a Motorola 68040
machine) was with Motif, which was a pretty good toolkit after you got used to
the very long function names.

~~~
rjsw
I'm typing this on a desktop running mwm and emacs linked against motif.

------
acd
Xsnow for christmas time and coding fun projects with christmas music :).

------
joezydeco
Free42 is also available for iOS and Android. It's very handy, especially when
I can keep my real 42S safe in a drawer at home.

[https://apps.apple.com/us/app/free42/id337692629](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/free42/id337692629)

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.thomasokke...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.thomasokken.free42&hl=en_US)

~~~
libria
The rendering on that 42s is close enough that I can almost feel the buttons.
Never thought I'd describe a calculator as sensual, but HP's of that era had
such a distinct look and feel.

~~~
drivers99
This is a great find. I used a 42S heavily through high school and college. I
was surprised at how some of the muscle memory of how I did certain things
came back. Seeing the dot matrix answer after doing some calculations brought
back the feeling of being bored in math class, when I would just play with all
the functions and write little programs. I didn't have a phone or even a
laptop to turn to in those days.

Even now though, it will be useful to do calculations in RPN. Even the ability
to swap X and Y, and store intermediate results in order to avoid parentheses
or M buttons is nice.

~~~
joezydeco
I felt the same way. And once you're comfortable with RPN, it's really hard to
go back. Painful, even.

------
Pete_D
Not sure if it counts as obscure, but to add to the note on xclipboard: xclip,
which lets you change and inspect the primary selection/clipboard from the
command line.

------
gsruff
This reminded me of xjump, a very addictive falling tower game where you must
continue to jump to the next highest platform as the lower platforms collapse
beneath you.

[https://linuxx.info/xjump/](https://linuxx.info/xjump/)

[https://github.com/hugomg/xjump](https://github.com/hugomg/xjump)

~~~
jmclnx
I wish I could find game xjumpxjump, it was a small number puzzle I played a
lot in FreeBSD. It was removed from ports years ago and I have yet to find the
src :(

~~~
gsruff
[http://ftp6.us.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD-
Archive/ports/distfil...](http://ftp6.us.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD-
Archive/ports/distfiles/xjumpjump.tgz)

~~~
jmclnx
Awesome, after a couple of easy mods it compiled on my syste.

Thanks!

------
zzo38computer
Sometimes xterm is still used; I use xterm. It is still being maintained, too.
I also sometimes use xfontsel. I do not think these are so obscure, isn't it?

Some of them, although I do not use them, I would not think they are so
obscure, such as xbiff, xload, xclock (I have the functions of all three
programs in another program I wrote, to display on a status line).

------
ptx
The GTK screenshots all use then ThinIce theme[1] – still my favorite, but
sadly not available for GTK 3 or 4. And I guess it wouldn't fit with GNOME's
current design direction anyway.

[1] [http://thinice.sourceforge.net/](http://thinice.sourceforge.net/)

~~~
davidcollantes
I don't think so. Those look like the original CDE Motif Window Manager[0].

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motif_(software)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motif_\(software\))

~~~
ptx
Sure, the window manager could be the Motif window manager, or perhaps FVWM.

I meant the widgets inside the window. The blue-tinted ones are GTK+ with
ThinIce; some of the darker grey ones are Motif.

------
CalChris
xcostena. It was an X application written at SGI which took an order and faxed
it to La Costena, a taqueria on Rengstorff (at the time). It might have been
the first case of e-commerce on the internet and this was pre-web.

~~~
kijiki
La Costena is still around, it just moved further down Middlefield towards
Sunnyvale, right before Ellis.

Sun had a similar app that would fax orders to Tony and Alba's pizza, though
that closed a few years ago.

~~~
CalChris
Yeah, _tatool_.

[https://medium.com/@donhopkins/the-story-of-sun-
microsystems...](https://medium.com/@donhopkins/the-story-of-sun-microsystems-
pizzatool-2a7992b4c797)

------
gramakri
Let me add my own cool but obscure project KDocker. You can use kdocker to
move any app to the system tray :) These days it's maintained by john at
[https://github.com/user-none/KDocker](https://github.com/user-none/KDocker)

Edit: oh wow, I actually tried it again now and it actually works! Crazy, this
was a tool I wrote like 12-13 years ago. I also found the initial sourceforge
page - [http://kdocker.sourceforge.net/](http://kdocker.sourceforge.net/)

------
drewg123
I still use xv to open images from the command line. Its like muscle memory.

~~~
saltcured
I switched to the "display" command from the various image/graphics magic
packages years ago, and now am frustratingly finding it has become unstable.

But, recently seeing some PBS specials on NASA and the planetary probes made
me reminisce about "xv". I remember having downloaded images of the Shoemaker-
Levy comet impact on Jupiter and browsing them with xv...

------
msla
It mentions Neko, which has its own Wikipedia page:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neko_(software)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neko_\(software\))

------
krylon
That grey-and-pink color scheme from the screenshots gives me such a wave of
nostalgia. It is fascinating how this color scheme is both terribly, terribly
ugly and gorgeous at the same time. ;-)

------
tangus
Nice nostalgia. Unfortunately most of the ones that deal with text are from
before the 8bit to utf-8 move, which makes them unusable nowadays (unless you
restrict yourself to ASCII).

------
sumanthvepa
Takes me back so many years to grad school. I still find myself using a few of
the tools though, even after all these years. xload for one is a favourite.

~~~
pgtan
my fvwm "desktop" consists for years only of FvwmPager, rclock, and multiple
xload running on different machines.

------
TickleSteve
What? no xdaliclock??

[https://www.jwz.org/xdaliclock/](https://www.jwz.org/xdaliclock/)

~~~
sjmulder
Warning, clicking this link from here redirects to an NSFWish image on imgur.
This guy has a problem with HN.

~~~
mceachen
`Open link in new tab/window` avoids the referer header and JWZ's bile.

~~~
jwilk
It doesn't, at least in Firefox.

------
fuball63
Strange coincidence this appears on the front page, as I have been having
system instability with freezes, and my hunch is that it's something with the
QT library. So lately I've been running only X programs instead of KDE apps,
and it hasn't frozen in a while. This list will give me some additional apps
to play with.

------
favadi
How come gvim is obscure?

~~~
II2II
Guess 1: this page was originally going to be "Cool X11 Tools from the
1990's."

Guess 2: perhaps the X11 version of vim is obscure. I usually visualize vim
users working in a terminal, with those interested in a GUI text editor using
something else.

~~~
buckminster
I used some of these in the 1980's!

------
z3t4
Cloud computing is becoming a thing ... eg. apps that runs "in the cloud" or
in your browser. But with Xserver you can just ssh -X into any machine, run an
app, and the front-end GUI will be visible on your machine! You can even play
games that way. Technology keeps going in circles ...

~~~
brimstedt
I find xforwarding extremely slow and sluggish. Can/Do you use it efficiently?

~~~
z3t4
It works fine for me, but I can not really see any use cases, as I can just
run the app locally. Use case's might be thin devices, like mobile phones and
Chromebooks. Instead of running containers on Chromebooks, students could ssh
into a computer that has all the apps they need; GUI apps like Photoshop, CAD,
etc.

~~~
toast0
Just a couple days ago, I used remote X to show some coworkers some things:

a) a (bad) NES emulator i wrote that was on my home machine, I didn't want to
compile it on the work laptop

b) chrome running on the home machine hitting a webcam pointed at a pressure
gauge --- I didn't want to bother with proxying and prozy settings, and I
don't let the webcam accept connections from public internet.

I've also found it super useful for running java based KVM clients for IPMI
--- run a VM with the properly old version of java so the webstart file works,
and display it with remote X.

xv or eog is nice for looking at images without the hassle of transferring
them first (although, transferring them would probably use less bandwidth)

------
azaras
I miss xev.

~~~
microcolonel
It's still there, and now there's wev, for Wayland.

~~~
azaras
I miss on the list.

------
jansc
I used XFontSel two days ago to find a font for my StumpWM mode line. Still
works like a charm.

Also, I miss XFig on the list. Still growing strong! The last release is from
May 2018. I use it occasionally to create diagrams for presentations.

------
billfruit
Some more obscure games were there, for example Sun Microsystems once released
a book about games available on Solaris, which included a flight simulator
amongst many others. Though I am unable to recollect the name.

------
a3n
Obscure today, but many of these were merely how things were done back then.

------
slang800
I didn't realize XArchiver was obscure. I use that pretty regularly.

------
rconti
I used xearth as my desktop for ages -- it doesn't have to be run in a window.

Xeyes and xclock were my go-to tests to make sure x11 forwarding was working
properly.

------
mastrsushi
I didn't know there was an Xgalaga. Linux Emulators aren't the best,
inevitably. Hope it's fluid on limited hardware

~~~
jhbadger
It was pretty good if I recall (from twenty years ago), but not exactly like
like arcade game. I sort of miss games like that -- Xchomp (a Pac-Man game) is
another. Before the advent of emulators, programmers used to make versions of
arcade games that they hadn't seen in years, making them (intentionally or
not) different from their inspirations.

------
kfir
To read that "editors/vim" is an obscure tool is nothing short of astonishing.

~~~
ksangeelee
To be fair, it's Gvim that's listed, which presumably is bundled with the main
vim package.

I had some vague awareness there was a GUI version of Vim, but only just
checked it out after spotting it in the list. The menus serve as a handy
reference for common commands. Quite good really.

------
irq-1
oclock shows a shaped window. `oclock -transparent` shows only the clocks
hands and border.

------
donio
xantfarm is another one I like, ant farm in your root window
[https://acme.com/software/xantfarm/](https://acme.com/software/xantfarm/)

------
JackFr
Where is Xrisk?

Networked version of the board game we used to play continuously at work.

------
miohtama
With the exception of local editors (gvim) and administration software
(xload), the need for these applications is easier to satisfy with online
HTML5 apps.

These are historically exciting, but nowadays the web browser is your X11.

~~~
powercf
The browser can't implement xeyes (the cursor position outside a window is
surely not visible?), so it will never be a serious replacement for X11.

------
brokensegue
I would add xkill

~~~
muterad_murilax
It's already in there...

------
zbuf
Does anyone know what happened to xpool?

------
jhallenworld
xphoon is missing

Also I seem to remember a multiuser 3d tank game, maybe xtank? I don't really
remember.

~~~
kbrackbill
bzflag?

~~~
jhallenworld
Maybe, it worked on Decstation 2100s and 3100s (black and white) around 1992.
Everybody in the computer lab was playing it.

------
aap_
I have the catclock in my xinitrc.

------
rhabarba
Vim is VERY obscure.

------
joshu
how about xbattle?

------
st3fan
xeyes!

