glblur(6)

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

✨ glblur — 3D radial blur texture fields ✨

okay so bestie, welcome to glblur(6), straight out of the XScreenSaver manual. this one's a screensaver and it is lowkey a whole aesthetic. buckle up 💖

🌈 SYNOPSIS 🌈

glblur [--display host:display.screen] [--visual visual] [--window]
       [--root] [--window-id number] [--delay number] [--blursize number]
       [--no-wander] [--no-spin] [--spin [XYZ]] [--fps]

that's the whole vibe check right there. moving on 🫶

💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

okay so what does it do? it draws a box, right, plus a few line segments, and then it generates a radial blur going outward from that. the result is these flowing field effects that are genuinely so pretty. 🦋

the way it actually pulls this off: it renders the scene into a small texture, then it repeatedly renders increasingly-enlarged and increasingly-transparent versions of that same texture onto the frame buffer. it's giving layers on layers on layers, no cap.

⚠️ heads up bestie: this means it's quite graphics intensive. like, seriously. don't even try to run this if you don't have hardware-accelerated texture support — it will hurt your machine bad. 😭 not a joke, it literally says that.

🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

  • --visual visual — pick which visual to use. legal values are either the name of a visual class, or the id number of a specific visual (decimal or hex, she's flexible 💅).
  • --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. main character energy, covering everything.
  • --window-id number — draw on the window you specify. you pick, you choose, you slay.
  • --delay number — per-frame delay, measured in microseconds. default: 10000 (that's 0.01 seconds.).
  • --blursize number — how many copies of the scene get laid down to make that vapor trail. default: 15. bigger numbers = smoother fields, but also slower. it's giving tradeoff, iykyk. 🍓
  • --wander | --no-wander — whether the object should wander around the screen or not. yes that's it, that's the whole option.
  • --spin [XYZ] — around which axes should the object spin? you tell it, king. 👑
  • --no-spin — none. that's it. that's the description. no spin. zero. nada. 💀
  • --fps — shows you the current frame rate, CPU load, and polygon count. the little stats moment. ⭐

🌸 ENVIRONMENT 🌸

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

🧚 SEE ALSO 🧚

X(1), xscreensaver(1) — go read those too bestie, they're the supporting cast 🫶

Copyright © 2002 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.

that's the legal bit, keep it exactly like that, don't come for me 🙈

⭐ AUTHOR ⭐

Jamie Zawinski, with inspiration from a tutorial by Dario Corno. iconic collaboration honestly 💅✨

and that's the page! 🎀 this whole thing is from X Version 11, version 6.15, dated 30-Mar-2026 — love that for us. bye bestie, go make some radial blur 🦋💖

📦 where this page comes from