downfall(6)

📦 version 6.15, in alpine 3.24, arch rolling, nixpkgs unstable

💧 downfall(6) — like, the whole manual, bestie ✨

okay so you opened the downfall(6) page, welcome, this is the XScreenSaver manual and I'm gonna walk you through it like we're texting at 2am 🫶

🌊 NAME

downfall — it's a screen saver. that's it. that's the whole name section. iconic brevity tbh 💅

✨ SYNOPSIS

downfall [--display host:display.screen] [--visual visual] [--window]
[--root] [--delay number] [--speed number] [--scale number] [--fps]

literally just run it with any of those and you're golden ⭐

🦋 DESCRIPTION

A close-up view of a grayscale waterfall. no colour, no chaos, just moody gray water up close and personal. it's giving main character cinematography, fr fr 🎀

💜 OPTIONS

  • --visual visual — tells it which visual to use. legal values are either the name of a visual class, or the id number (decimal or hex) of a specific visual. so like, name it or number it, your call 😌
  • --window — draw on a newly-created window. this is the default, so if you do nothing, this is what you get 🪟
  • --root — draw on the root window instead. big background energy 🌈
  • --delay number — per-frame delay, in microseconds. default: 20000 (that's 0.02 seconds, yes I did the math for you 💖)
  • --speed number — animation speed. 2.0 means twice as fast, 0.5 means half as fast. go fast, go slow, go iconic 🔥
  • --scale number — resolution. 0.1 - 1.0. default: 1.0. tiny to full-size, no in-between shenanigans 🧚
  • --fps, --no-fps — whether to show a frames-per-second display at the bottom of the screen. turn it on if you love numbers, off if you don't 🙈

🌸 ENVIRONMENT

  • DISPLAY — to get the default host and display number. classic.
  • XENVIRONMENT — to get the name of a resource file that overrides the global resources stored in the RESOURCE_MANAGER property. yes, that's the whole vibe, it's a whole override situation 👑
  • XSCREENSAVER_WINDOW — the window ID to use with --root. important pairing, don't forget it 💀

🔍 SEE ALSO

X(1), xscreensaver(1), and https://www.shadertoy.com/view/w3sBWl — go look at the shader, it's lowkey the origin story of all this 🌟

Copyright © 2025 by Matt Vianueva. Permission to use, copy, modify, distribute, and sell this software and its documentation for any purpose is hereby granted without fee, provided that the above copyright notice appear in all copies and that both that copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting documentation. No representations are made about the suitability of this software for any purpose. It is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty.

ngl, that last bit matters: no promises about suitability, and it's "as is" — no express or implied warranty, periodt 💅

💌 AUTHOR

Matt Vianueva <diatribes@gmail.com>. say hi, he made the waterfall 🫶

and that's the whole page!! X Version 11, 6.15 (30-Mar-2026) — that's the source/version and date, bestie, so you know exactly which era of downfall you're living in ✨💖

📦 where this page comes from