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Nexoniarz 2aef583aad Twelve login terminals, root only, console fixes, a faster build, a Niveus splash, and X back on evdev

- tty1-tty12 all run login; the image has only root. /dev/tty7..12 could not
  be written (cdev.c knew minors 10-16 only), which sent their jobs into a
  restart storm that took the supervisor down; fixed, and stat reports them as
  Linux's tty7..12.
- Erasing text at a prompt did nothing: erase_one sent a bare backspace, which
  only moves; it and the echo path now send back-blank-back through vt_feed.
- A white cursor block was left at the end of every line of a verbose boot:
  a line feed at the bottom scrolls the pixels, cursor included, and the
  cursor was erased after the scroll. It comes off first now. A blank cell is
  also marked dirty, which it was not.
- ldlsd died with a general protection fault on real hardware in its variadic
  log function: Linux module code calls with an 8-byte-aligned stack and an
  unset %al, and the prologue's movaps faults. LDLS guest code is built with
  -mstackrealign.
- make iso took over a minute for any change, because staging r8169 rewrote
  the same files and every mtime moved; it now replaces files only if their
  contents differ (about 10 s).
- The loader's splash is redrawn in the boot manager's style, and the boot
  manager shows its cursor whenever a pointer device exists.
- xf86-input-libinput is out of the image again: with it Xorg took both
  keyboard and pointer from libinput and, on the user's laptop, neither worked.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01EVRhxi9zpdW2uDUN4FVcao

2026-10-26 17:43:44 +01:00

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The desktop: Xorg on the framebuffer

The desktop is X11, on the framebuffer: Alpine's xorg-server with the fbdev video driver and the evdev input driver, Window Maker as the window manager, and xterm. startx runs wmaker. Nothing here is written by SchOS except the kernel interfaces it stands on and four small files in tools/posix/mkaroot.sh.

Xorg is the desktop for now, not for ever. SchOS will not write its own compositor (the one it had, Schcom, was deleted). What comes next is whichever of XLibre (the Xorg fork), Xorg or a Wayland compositor from Alpine suits the machine; the groundwork Wayland needs — udev, /sys/devices, libinput, a DRM device — is in ../plan/roadmap.md §5.

Why X and not Wayland

Every Wayland compositor worth running — labwc, and everything built on wlroots — needs DRM/KMS, libinput, udev and libseat. DRM/KMS is the largest of them by far: a kernel graphics subsystem, and in practice a great deal taken from Linux. Xorg runs on a plain framebuffer through fbdev, which SchOS already had. That is the shorter road to a desktop by a long way, and it brings the window managers with it. udev, libinput and libseat are now in the image (udev.md); DRM/KMS is the part still missing, and it is the GPU plan (../plan/gpu.md).

What it stands on


fbdev	`/dev/fb0` speaks Linux's fbdev (graphics.md)
evdev	`/dev/input/event0` (every keyboard) and `event1` (every mouse and touchpad) with Linux's queries, LED writes and key/button/relative-axis bits
VTs	`/dev/tty0`, `VT_SETMODE(VT_PROCESS)`, `KD_GRAPHICS`, the release/acquire handshake (terminals.md)
dlopen	Xorg loads its drivers as modules, so `exec` does dynamic linking (kernel.md)
sysfs	`/sys/bus/pci/devices/*/{boot_vga,enable,graphics/fb0}`, which libpciaccess reads
ptys	`xterm` runs its shell on a pseudo-terminal
Unix sockets	the X11 socket, abstract names, `SO_PEERCRED`, `flock`
headers	`<linux/*.h>` in the build sysroot, as `ports/linux-headers`

cmd/xready checks every one of the kernel calls Xorg makes before it draws anything — the evdev queries, the fbdev calls, the console calls, and the /sys files — one at a time, on a terminal of its own, and puts everything back. The calls were written against what the programs are documented to do; each step past it found one that was not, which is what running the real program is for.

The four files

/root/.xserverrc starts X on the VT startx was started from (startx works that out only when uname -s says Linux, and SchOS's says SchIFT). It used to add -dumbSched, Xorg's switch for reading input on the main loop, because Xorg normally reads input on a thread of its own and, when SchOS had no threads, the server crashed the first time a client disconnected, in pthread_join on a thread that was never made. Threads exist now and the switch is gone: under QEMU, X starts with Window Maker, xclock and xeyes connect and disconnect, an xterm runs and exits, and the server stays up.
/root/.xinitrc is exec wmaker. Without it xinit falls back to twm and an xterm, which are not in the image.
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-schos.conf holds what the defaults do not give: Ctrl+Alt+Backspace enabled, the keyboard options, and the framebuffer driver. Input devices are found, not named: Xorg asks libudev, which reads what udevd wrote to /run/udev (udev.md).
/etc/asound.conf is for sound, not X (audio.md).

Using it

Twelve virtual terminals, switched with Ctrl+Alt+F1–F12 — on the console and under X alike, because X owns the keyboard while it runs and switches only with that chord. startx on a terminal runs the desktop there; Ctrl+Alt+Backspace ends the session and gives the terminal back. Window Maker, xterm, xeyes, xclock, xcalc, DejaVu fonts; SDL 2 games (lbreakouthd) and NetSurf, a GTK 3 browser, run in it.

Touchpads that sit on an I2C bus (most laptops) are driven by kernel/acpi/i2c_hid.c, found through ACPI, and reach X as a mouse: pointer, click and tap.

What it does not do

No acceleration. Software rendering to the framebuffer: no DRM, no glamor, no DRI, no OpenGL beyond what software gives. GPU drivers are a plan (../plan/gpu.md).
udev covers the kernel's own devices only. Input, terminals, memory devices, the framebuffer and disks are announced; PCI and USB devices are in /sys/bus/*/devices but are not yet in the /sys/devices tree or on the uevent socket (udev.md).
Touchpads are mice: no two-finger scroll, no gestures, no palm rejection.
No resolution change from inside X. The mode is the console's; schmode changes the vgpud head only, and the loader's menu is where a real panel's mode is chosen.
Runs as an ordinary user where there is one: startx works by group permission alone (users.md); the image has only root; X itself is still a single seat with no logind or seatd.

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