geodesic(6)

📦
version 6.15 · 2 versions
, in alpine 3.24, arch rolling, nixpkgs unstable

💫 geodesic(6) — the XScreenSaver manual, bestie edition ✨

okay so you opened the man page for <pink>geodesic</pink>, which lives in the XScreenSaver manual like the icon it is. it spins a mesh geodesic sphere at you, and honestly? it ate. let's get into it 🫶

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

geodesic [--display host:display.screen] [--visual visual] [--window]
[--root] [--window-id number] [--mode mode] [--no-wander] [--no-spin]
[--fps] [--delay number] [--speed number] [--count number]

like, that's the whole vibe right there. no cap. 💅

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so what it does is animate a mesh geodesic sphere whose complexity keeps going up and then back down again — increasing and decreasing, the way that a good playlist builds and drops. 🔥

and for the uninitiated: a geodesic sphere is literally an icosohedron whose equilateral faces get subdivided into non-equilateral triangles so it more closely approximates a sphere. that's the whole trick. iykyk.

the animation shows the equilateral triangles subdivided into four coplanar equilateral triangles — cute, very demure — and then inflated outward, which makes the sub-triangles stop being equilateral and start more closely approximating the surface of a sphere. it's giving glow-up. it's giving geometry slay. 😭✨

💖 OPTIONS 💖

  • --visual visual — specify which visual to use. legal values are the name of a visual class, or the id number (decimal or hex) of a specific visual. pick your fighter 💅
  • --window — draw on a newly-created window. this is the default, bestie, so you're already doing it.
  • --root — draw on the root window. main character energy, full screen.
  • --window-id number — draw on the specified window. you point, it paints. 🎀
  • --mode mesh | solid | stellated | stellated2 | wire — the face/edge display style. default mesh. yes there are five of them. stellated2 is real and it's iconic. ⭐
  • --wander | --no-wander — whether the object should wander around the screen. free range sphere 🦋
  • --spin | --no-spin — whether the object should spin. honestly why would you turn this off but ok go off 👑
  • --fps | --no-fps — whether to show a frames-per-second display at the bottom of the screen. numbers!! at the bottom!! 🌈
  • --delay number — per-frame delay, in microseconds. default: 30000 (0.03 seconds). 🍓
  • --speed number — animation speed. 2.0 means twice as fast, 0.5 means half as fast. girl math, but accurate. 🔥
  • --count number — depth (frequency) of the geodesic sphere. default: 4. more count = more triangles = more to obsess over 💜

🌼 ENVIRONMENT 🌼

  • DISPLAY — to get the default host and display number.
  • XENVIRONMENT — to get the name of a resource file that overrides the global resources stored in the RESOURCE_MANAGER property. fancy, honestly.
  • XSCREENSAVER_WINDOW — the window ID to use with --root.

✨ SEE ALSO ✨

go read those too, bestie, they're the lore 🧚

Copyright © 2013 by Jamie Zawinski. 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.

yes, all of that is load-bearing. don't strip it out. 🙈

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Jamie Zawinski.

and that's the whole page, no notes 💖 this little icon is from X Version 11, version 6.15, dated 30-Mar-2026 — so go forth, run geodesic, and watch some triangles get inflated. periodt. 🎀💫

📦 where this page comes from