That Qingy thingy

This was a step in the complete opposite direction for me, but by way of digging around with framebuffer applications, I stumbled onto Qingy.

Qingy is what I would call a login manager, although I see that by definition it’s a replacement for agetty or mingetty or just getty — programs that handle the virtual consoles. So yes, in that sense it is a login manager, although beyond screening your password and user name, it doesn’t do a lot for me.

If you wanted a lightweight replacement for GDM or KDM (or even XDM), it’s a heckuva lot better looking than a console login, and has a built-in minimal screensaver and shutdown/reboot options. The setup file is at /etc/qingy/settings, and themes are in /usr/share/qingy/themes. There’s an Arch login theme in AUR as qingy-theme-arch, and it’s probably my favorite of all of them. 😉

My only notes after using it for an hour or so are to make sure you have the proper font installed, or it looks godawful. Also set the framebuffer screen depth in /etc/directfbrc with depth=24, or you get streaked color bands on some themes.

In addition, add gpm to your rig and make sure you set the configuration file at /etc/conf.d/gpm for your mouse. Mine worked best with

GPM_ARGS="-m /dev/input/mice -t imps2"

In all, it’s light, it does what it’s told and it looks good, so I can hardly complain.

I’m not sure why lightweight distros like Fluxbuntu or (ahem) Xubuntu wouldn’t make better use of it; I think perhaps in the case of the latter, so much Gnome infrastructure has been added anyway that it’s more or less bound to GDM. So be it.

For my purposes it’s just another impediment to a speedy boot, and that’s what I’m after right now. So the blog serves its original purpose again: I make a note of it here, knowing that I’m probably going to be searching for it again some time in the future. 😉

P.S.: Thanks again to the Gentoo wiki for helping set it up.