Unleashing the Power: TTY, Linux Framebuffer, EGLFS and SDL - Without the weight of Xorg or Wayland

2025-09-13

1. TTY Environment Setup

For efficient management of your terminals and processes, it is essential to use a terminal multiplexer.

Start a Terminal Multiplexer Upon Login:
- For fish shell, add to the .config/fish/config.fish file:

if status --is-login  
    if test -z "$DISPLAY" -a $XDG_VTNR = 1  
        exec tmux  
    end  
end

This will automatically start tmux in the tty number 1 (a terminal multiplexer similar to tmux).
Alternatively, you can use dvtm.

2. Web Browsing from TTY

Recommended Text Browsers:
- w3m: This browser supports displaying images directly in the console without an additional tool you can render JavaScript only sites using headless chromium save it as shell script and set it as external browser in w3m: chromium --headless $1 --disable-gpu --run-all-compositor-stages-before-draw --dump-dom --virtual-time-budget=10000 | sed "s|<head>|<head><base href=$1>|g" | w3m -T text/html.
- chawan.
- Install fbida:

3. Multimedia Viewing: Images, PDFs, and Videos

View Images in TTY (with fbi and mpv):
- Install fbida: pacman -S fbida. You can use fbi (part of fbida) to view images: fbi image.jpg or fim image.jpg.
- mpv can also be used to view images.
Read PDFs from the TTY:
- fbpdf: fbpdf document_name.pdf
- Alternatively, you can use any KDE application to open a pdf too.
Watch Videos (YouTube, Twitch) from the TTY:
- w3m with Invidious:
  - Browse to Invidious (e.g., inv.nadeko.net) with w3m.
  - Configure mpv as the default browser in w3m. When accessing the video URL, press Shift+M to open it with mpv or Escape+Shift+M.
- mpv for Twitch:
  - You can use mpv to watch Twitch streams (you will have to run mpv with --ignore-config if you’re using mpv with YouTube settings.
- Video Playback in DRM: mpv --vo=drm video.mp4
- mpv and invidious for YouTube:
  - alias invidious 'w3m https://inv.nadeko.net/feed/subscriptions' and set mpv as default browser.

My `/etc/mpv/mpv.conf`:

$ cat /etc/mpv/mpv.conf  
--profile=fast  
--sub-auto=all  
--vo=drm
--ytdl-raw-options="format=bestvideo[height<=?360]+bestaudio/best[height<=?360]/bestvideo[height<=?480]+bestaudio/best[height<=?480],write-auto-sub=,sub-lang=[es,en,ru],write-sub="  
--volume-max=600  
#--save-position-on-quit  
#--untimed  
#--profile=low-latency  
--mute=yes

My `/etc/yt-dlp.conf`:

$ cat /etc/yt-dlp.conf  
--format=233+230  
--write-auto-sub  
--write-sub  
--sub-lang=en  
#--cookies-from-browser firefox

Important: If you use mpv for videos, run it outside tmux; otherwise, you won’t be able to switch between other TTYs.

Search Torrents:
- Use jackett and btstrm to search for torrents from the console.

4. Using Lightweight Graphical Applications in TTY (FrameBuffer: `eglfs` and `linuxfb`)

Set environment Variables for eglfs and linuxfb:
To enable/disable gpu.

#export QTWEBENGINE_CHROMIUM_FLAGS="--ignore-gpu-blacklist --disable-gpu"
export QTWEBENGINE_CHROMIUM_FLAGS="--ignore-gpu-blacklist"

Use export XKB_DEFAULT_LAYOUT=es to set your keyboard distribution.
To use eglfs:

export QT_QPA_PLATFORM=eglfs

Then, start your Qt application (e.g., qutebrowser).

To use linuxfb:

export QT_QPA_PLATFORM=linuxfb:size=1000x1000

To run some applications that normally require a graphical server (like graphical web browsers), you can run it using linuxfb or eglfs.

Always open Qt apps inside a Terminal Multiplexer, otherwise when the application freezes your entire machine will freeze and you won’t be able to use `Control+C`.

In some Linux distributions, you need to run the following command to get the mouse and keyboard working:

sudo chmod 666 /dev/input/event*

Graphical Browsers (with eglfs, linuxfb or sdl support):
- qutebrowser (with eglfs):
  Or configure the QT_QPA_PLATFORM environment variable as indicated above.
  - Copy/Paste in qutebrowser: You can use privatebin to copy text from qutebrowser, then access the URL and save the file.
- falkon:
  - It can be used with eglfs, although it did not work with linuxfb in one instance.
  - I use Android as my User-Agent: For pages to load faster:
- Ad Blocking in Falkon (it’s no good) so I use greasymonkey (still not good).
  1. Go to AdBlock settings, and add all non-regional lists (EasyPrivacy, NoCoin List, Anti-Adblock Killer, Peter Lowe’s List, etc.).
  2. Go to Settings -> Extensions, and check the box for GreaseMonkey.
  3. Install a YouTube ad-blocking script from https://greasyfork.org.
- Konqueror: It is a KDE browser that can also be tested in these configurations.
- NetSurf: Can be run in tty using SDL: netsurf-fb -f sdl -w 1366 -h 768. NetSurf does not have JavaScript support. You can add netsurf-fb -f sdl -w 1366 -h 768 as external browser in w3m.
All KDE applications built with Qt can run from the TTY using these framebuffer platforms like kolourpaint you can play games like doom also.
Use Control+Z to get back to the TTY and fg to reopen the qt application.
when using ffmpeg to record, you can capture any qt application with the linuxfb platform, but recording is not possible if you are using elgfs.

# You need to open the live dashboard first.  
  
falkon "https://www.youtube.com/live_dashboard"  
  
### Stream to YouTube only tty.  
ffmpeg -f alsa -i pipewire -thread_queue_size 1024 -f fbdev -framerate 60 -i /dev/fb0 -c:v libx264 -preset ultrafast -tune zerolatency -pix_fmt yuv420p -c:a aac -b:a 128k -f flv -async 1 -ar 48000 -latency 100 -bufsize 1000k rtmp://a.rtmp.youtube.com/live2/KEY 2> /dev/null  
  
#### Stream to YouTube TTY with camera.  
ffmpeg -f alsa -i pipewire -thread_queue_size 1024 -f fbdev -framerate 60 -i /dev/fb0 -f v4l2 -framerate 60 -video_size 320x240 -i /dev/video0 -filter_complex "[2:v]scale=320:240[cam];[1:v][cam]overlay=main_w-overlay_w-10:main_h-overlay_h-10[outv]" -map "[outv]" -map 0:a -c:v libx264 -preset ultrafast -tune zerolatency -pix_fmt yuv420p -c:a aac -b:a 128k -f flv -bufsize 1000k rtmp://a.rtmp.youtube.com/live2/KEY 2> /dev/null  
  
### Stream to YouTube full cam.  
ffmpeg -f alsa -i pipewire -thread_queue_size 1024 -f v4l2 -framerate 60 -video_size 1280x720 -i /dev/video0 -c:v libx264 -preset ultrafast -tune zerolatency -pix_fmt yuv420p -c:a aac -b:a 128k -f flv -bufsize 1000k rtmp://a.rtmp.youtube.com/live2/KEY 2> /dev/null  
  
### Record video.  
ffmpeg -f alsa -i pipewire -f fbdev -r 30 -i /dev/fb0 record.mp4

5. Additional Tips and Useful Tools

Mouse Usage in TTY:
- You need to use GPM to have mouse support in the TTY: sudo systemctl start gpm.
Copy and Paste Text from Graphical Browser:
- This is the solution I use I’m sure there’s better: I use privatebin, to copy text (e.g., from qutebrowser), paste it into privatebin, and then save the paste to a file.

My current alias for web-browsing:

alias dgg 'w3m  dgg.gg'
alias mojeek "w3m https://www.mojeek.com/search?q=hola"
alias wiby "w3m http://wiby.org"
alias news "netsurf-fb -f sdl -w 1366 -h 768 news.ycombinator.com"
alias doom 'cd doom; bash play_doom.sh;'
alias rcommandline "w3m old.reddit.com/r/commandline"
alias google 'w3m  google.com'

1. TTY Environment Setup

2. Web Browsing from TTY

3. Multimedia Viewing: Images, PDFs, and Videos

My /etc/mpv/mpv.conf:

My /etc/yt-dlp.conf: