

 I just released F.lux for Ubuntu (fades your screens at night) - kilian
http://kilianvalkhof.com/2010/linux/flux-for-ubuntu/

======
paulsmith
A similar program for automatically changing the color temperature, Redshift
[1], was recently highlighted by Lifehacker and others as an alternative to
the commandline-only XFlux, inspired by F.lux.

EDIT: One advantage Redshift has is that it automatically determines your
lng/lat based on your current "home" location in the Clock applet.

[1]: <http://jonls.dk/redshift/>

~~~
there
redshift is also open source and thus works on other platforms, where f.lux is
closed source.

~~~
nuxi
It works on other platforms _because_ it's open source? Isn't that a bit of an
overstatement? For the fun of it, I just downloaded this and tried to compile
on my Linux box:

    
    
      ~/tmp/tmp# uname -a
      Linux susie 2.6.27.39-0.2-default #1 SMP 2009-11-23 12:57:38 +0100 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
      ~/tmp/tmp# cat /etc/SuSE-release
      openSUSE 11.1 (x86_64)
      VERSION = 11.1
    
      ~/tmp/tmp# wget http://launchpad.net/redshift/trunk/1.4.1/+download/redshift-1.4.1.tar.bz2
      ~/tmp/tmp# tar xf redshift-1.4.1.tar.bz2
      ~/tmp/tmp# cd redshift-1.4.1/
      ~/tmp/tmp/redshift-1.4.1# ./configure
      [...]
       redshift 1.4.1
    
          prefix:             /usr/local
          compiler:           gcc -std=gnu99
          cflags:             -g -O2
          ldflags:
    
          Adjustment methods:
          RANDR:              yes
          VidMode:            yes
          WinGDI:             no
    
          Location providers:
          GNOME Clock:        no
    
          GUI:                statusicon
    
      ~/tmp/tmp/redshift-1.4.1# make
      ~/tmp/tmp/redshift-1.4.1# make
      make  all-recursive
      make[1]: Entering directory `/root/tmp/tmp/redshift-1.4.1'
      Making all in src
      make[2]: Entering directory `/root/tmp/tmp/redshift-1.4.1/src'
      Making all in gtk-redshift
      make[3]: Entering directory `/root/tmp/tmp/redshift-1.4.1/src/gtk-redshift'
      sed -e "s|\@gui_module\@|statusicon|g" gtk-redshift.in > gtk-redshift
      make[3]: Leaving directory `/root/tmp/tmp/redshift-1.4.1/src/gtk-redshift'
      make[3]: Entering directory `/root/tmp/tmp/redshift-1.4.1/src'
        CC     redshift.o
      In file included from redshift.c:60:
      gamma-randr.h:33: error: expected specifier-qualifier-list before xcb_randr_crtc_t
      make[3]: *** [redshift.o] Error 1
      make[3]: Leaving directory `/root/tmp/tmp/redshift-1.4.1/src'
      make[2]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
      make[2]: Leaving directory `/root/tmp/tmp/redshift-1.4.1/src'
      make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
      make[1]: Leaving directory `/root/tmp/tmp/redshift-1.4.1'
      make: *** [all] Error 2
    

This is Linux mind you, not some AIX box on which it will never compile, even
though it has X11 installed. (And yes, I know I can disable RANDR in the above
case and it will compile, that's beside the point)

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
The point is not that it works out of the box on all platforms, but that if it
doesn't work on your platform, you have the source code available, so you can
_make_ it work on your platform by changing the software. You can't do that
with closed-source binaries.

~~~
nuxi
With that I can mostly agree (but the comment implied otherwise).

But - and this is sometimes a huge but - open source software (OSS) is more
and more dependant on other OSS, making it sometimes next to impossible to
port it to other platforms. Try building VLC from scratch and you'll see what
I mean (you can use Linux). Furthermore, API changes are quite common for OSS
even in minor version updates and that creates an additional mess (dependency
hell), as was clearly demonstrated in my example above.

It's not all black and white.

------
arohner
I started using F.lux a month or so ago to help with insomnia. It's helped a
lot, thank you for writing it.

I've been holding out on buying an iPad to read in bed, precisely because
F.lux has helped me so much on OSX. Is there a flux equivalent for iOS? Is it
possible to write one?

~~~
danlove
Would be possible for an application to mimic Flux, but there is no way
(except on a Jailbroken device) to do system wide Flux. Could be a nice niche
for a browser or RSS reader though.

~~~
herf
I have a bunch of hacks, but nothing that actually works right on iOS yet.

------
frognibble
F.lux adjusts the color of your computer's monitor to match the time of day.
It's warm at night and like sunlight during the day.

I've been using F.lux for a couple of months on OS X. The orange color at
night looked a odd to me at first, but now I don't notice it.

F.lux can help you sleep better:
<http://www.stereopsis.com/flux/research.html>

------
sbarre
I will chime in with the chorus and say I've been using F.lux for at least a
month and it works great! Thank you!

------
ryanca
Has anyone figured out how to get this to work on a multi-display
configuration? I tried it and found it only affected my primary screen.

~~~
kilian
It's probably of no help to you, but I use a dualscreen nVidia setup
(twinview), and it just works.

------
cturner
I've been using flux and find it works as advertised on helping my sleep
patterns. Thanks for your work on it.

------
maqr
I use f.lux backwards. I leave it on normally, but when I need to wake up to
re-focus and get stuff done (and it's dark out), I turn it off, and I feel
more awake again.

It's probably all in my head, but I'm going with it for now ;)

~~~
user24
no, that really does work, at least it seems so for me; I have it set to the
default settings but if I'm working late and feeling tired I switch it off and
enjoy the "brightness kick".

One of the greatest features of f.lux for me is that I actually start feeling
more tired after it kicks in, so it really does encourage me to get to bed
earlier.

------
ydant
It complained about not supporting my color depth (although nvidia-settings is
set to 24 bit).

before (last 100 chars): we only support 24/32-bit displays right now.
XF86VidModeGetGammaRampSize returned 2048 entries.

xflux does the same. It's a new laptop - i7 in 64bit mode, so I don't know if
that's at fault. I loved xflux on the old (32bit, nvidia) laptop, though.

Redshift as mentioned by paulsmith works great.

------
thaumaturgy
Great!

I've been a huge fan of F.lux on OS X for a very long time. The beautiful
thing about the recent "gradual change" feature is that now I don't even
notice it when I'm working late at night -- unless I have to turn off the
application for some reason, and then I find myself squinting and fleeing.

Anyway, just wanted to take a moment out to thank you for helping so many
people out.

------
mwsherman
I've been using it for a month or two on Windows and am quite surprised how
much I like it.

~~~
farmerbuzz
Flux didn't change the appearance enough for me -- what I really want is to
have light text on a dark background at night. One ugly hack is to use the
Windows 7 magnifier tool to invert video. The colors are atrocious but you can
pretend they are neon lights for night mode ;)

------
chengas123
That's awesome!! Thank you! I just gave up my Windows machine for Ubuntu and
F.lux was one of the things I missed most. Is there a .deb I can download
directly? I don't think I can add new repositories on my work computer.

~~~
winthrowe
you can install a deb package, but not add a source? That seems like an odd
configuration to me.

~~~
chengas123
agreed, but i wasn't the one to make that decision :o)

------
quadhome
I e-mailed the author months ago about a bug where the glibc command-line
version would stay alive and peg to 100% CPU usage after logout. It seems to
have never been fixed.

Any chance you could ping him about that?

~~~
herf
Fix is posted: <https://secure.herf.org/flux/xflux.tgz>

I wasn't able to find this in the old build, but the current one definitely
has the bug. Let me know how it works.

~~~
quadhome
Thank you! Testing now.

Redshift is nice. But, the colours in xflux feel better. Nothing quantifiable
though.

I spent a little bit of time a few months ago trying to dump the gamma tables
to compare. Only accomplished reminding myself why I hate low-level X.

------
fizzfur
I installed the osx version of flux ages ago and never looked back, stunningly
unintrusive.

Although waking up in the morning to find your beautiful late design is bright
cyan is a bit of a shocker sometimes.

------
sgentle
The last version of XFlux I used reset the screen brightness every second,
which made the screen flicker uncontrollably during fades (eg on lock, logout,
screen saver etc). Does that still happen?

~~~
kilian
It does this if you're running more than one instance of XFlux, they, uhm,
seem to fight with each other ;). F.lux for Ubuntu prevents you from starting
the app more than once :)

------
kristiandupont
I have been using it for almost a year and it is on my list of must install
programs. And I am very picky about what I run in the system tray.

------
rlpb
xflux is included as a binary in the package source. I'm sure you mean well,
but this is a security risk and breaks the terms of use for the Launchpad PPA
(as it is not distributed under a permitted licence). You could host the
package elsewhere, though.

------
augustl
Why is it only for Ubuntu? Or is it also runnable on, say, any GNOME setup?

~~~
pmjordan
There's a github link, so presumably it's only _packaged_ for Ubuntu. I'm
hoping I can get it running on OpenSUSE/KDE4.

~~~
kilian
If it has appindicator support, it'll run. I'm not sure if any other
distributions already support it though. If you could let me know if you can
get it to work on openSUSE/KDE4, (email in my profile) that'd be great!

~~~
pmjordan
Appindicator does seem to be the critical bit; I'm still on OpenSUSE 11.2
which definitely has zero support, planning to upgrade to 11.3, which might,
at the weekend. I'll keep you updated. My Python isn't so great unfortunately,
so it'd probably take me too long to port it to something more widely
supported.

------
fgf
I love it.

------
hackermom
I use the OS X version of this to combat my sleeping disorder - and reducing
the amount of blue light during the mandatory "bedtime hacking" definitely
does help to sedate me.

