whalefin

whalefin, a Display Manager built with Wails

A minimal display manager for GNU/Systemd/Linux.

The goal is to create a very extensible, browser-based display manager.

make 
sudo make install
systemctl disable display-manager || true
systemctl enable whalefin
sudo reboot

That should be all you need if you are transitioning away from another Display Manager. If you run into issues using whalefin, please visit Troubleshooting below.

Screenshot

The current version of whalefin looks like this:

Development

The whalefin display manager can be tested by running as a normal Wails application (with make run .) or by running it within a Xephyr window (requires Xephyr installed) by running make embed.

Troubleshooting

Logging in Fails

Problem

When attempting to log in, authentication fails despite using the correct username and password.

Solution

whalefin, like most other Display Managers, makes use of PAM, the Pluggable Authentication Module system. This requires the appropriate rules be in place. The following snippet creates a display_manager module by copying the login one. It must be run as root: install -Dm00644 /etc/pam.d/login /etc/pam.d/display_manager

Audio Issues

Problem

I'm using PulseAudio, and I had sound before using startx. Now, using whalefin, PulseAudio doesn't recognize any of my audio inputs or outputs. pavucontrol shows dummy sinks.

Solution

whalefin uses bash --login to run your .xinitrc, and therefore imposes stricter configuration requirements than startx. Create an audio group if it does not already exist, and add your user to it. Log out and back in to reload the group list.

Notifications No Longer Work

Problem

DBUS is not initialized properly in the .xinitrc you're using. This is due to your XDG variables (which startx handles for you) not being set properly.

Solution

Be sure your XDG variables are set, such as export XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/run/user/$(id -u) towards the top of your .xinitrc. Failing to do so breaks dbus and as a result, systemctl in user mode. Be sure your .xinitrc is compliant with the recommendations of your distro, and properly sources config files from /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d (if applicable).

Credits

The idea behind whalefin was loosely inspired by fin.

whalefin would not have been possible without the knowledge and expertise of Gulshan Singh. Wails is © 2019-Present Lea Anthony.