November 30, 2025
Choose your TTY… and your destiny
Ly – A lightweight TUI (ncurses-like) display manager for Linux and BSD
Hacker-movie login vibes hit Linux; fans swoon, Fedora folks side-eye
TLDR: Ly is a minimalist, text-based login for Linux/BSD that brings “Matrix” vibes but demands careful setup, especially on Fedora with SELinux. Fans gush over the retro aesthetic, while admins debate Zig builds, X11 requirements, and the risk of breaking a console if you don’t disable the right service
A new lightweight, text-based login screen for Linux and BSD called Ly is serving pure hacker-movie energy, and the community is buzzing. Think “The Matrix,” but for your computer’s lock screen. One fan on NixOS even flexed a digital rain setup and said they “enjoy it way too much,” dropping a dotfiles link like a mic.
Behind the neon glow, there’s drama. Fedora users are warned Ly can clash with SELinux (a security system), sparking a chorus of “add a rule or prepare for chaos.” And because Ly runs on those old-school text consoles (TTYs), you have to disable the one it uses or “bad things will happen.” Cue memes about accidentally nuking your login.
Ly is built with Zig (a programming language), which stirred the usual Zig vs Rust vs C side-eye. Purists love the simplicity; others joked they’d rather not compile their login like a space shuttle. There’s also the perennial systemd vs everything-else squabble—Ly supports multiple boot managers, which the tinkerer crowd loves, while the “keep it simple” folks beg for fewer steps.
Strongest opinions? Style-over-substance fans adore the retro TUI look, sysadmins fret about SELinux and service fiddling, and Wayland die-hards grumble that X11 (old graphics system) is still required by default. The vibe: playful chaos, hacker aesthetics, and just enough danger to feel cool
Key Points
- •Ly is a lightweight TUI display manager for Linux and BSD, with development on Codeberg and a GitHub mirror.
- •Compile-time dependencies include zig 0.15.x, libc, pam, and optionally xcb (required by default for X11).
- •Default runtime requirements include xorg, xorg-xauth, shutdown, and brightnessctl; logs and config are managed via /etc/ly/config.ini.
- •SELinux on Fedora may cause issues; users should add a custom rule since Ly does not ship one.
- •Installation is documented for multiple init systems (systemd default, OpenRC, runit, s6, dinit) and FreeBSD, with a requirement to disable getty on Ly’s target TTY (default tty2).