boing(6x)

📦
version 6.17 · 10 versions
, in fedora 44

💖 boing — the bounce that ate 💖

okay bestie, welcome to boing(6x), a page from the XScreenSaver manual, and honestly? it's giving legend origin story. sit down, hydrate, we're doing graphics history 🫶

✨ NAME ✨

boing — draws a bouncing ball, like the ancient Amiga demo. no cap, that's literally the whole job and it does it flawlessly 💅

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

boing [--display host:display.screen] [--window] [--root] [--window-id
number][--install] [--visual visual] [--delay usecs] [--smooth]
[--lighting] [--scanlines] [--speed] [--no-spin] [--angle degrees]
[--size ratio] [--parallels n] [--meridians n] [--wireframe] [--fps]

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so. the boing program draws a bouncing checkered ball on a grid. that's it. that's the vibe. iconic behavior, honestly 🌈

it's a clone of the very first graphics demo for the Amiga 1000, which was written by Dale Luck and RJ Mical during a break at the 1984 Consumer Electronics Show. (or so the legend goes — and we believe the legend, fr fr 👑)

the boing ball was briefly the official logo of Amiga Inc., until they got bought by Commodore later that year. rip to that logo era, gone but never forgotten 😭

run it with no arguments and it looks a whole lot like the original Amiga demo. run it with -smooth -lighting and it looks… less old. glow-up arc, periodt ✨

🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

boing accepts the following options, and yes bestie, we're going through all of them because we don't skip 💖

  • --window — draw on a newly-created window. this is the default, so if you do nothing, this is what you get. main character energy by default 💅
  • --root — draw on the root window. going full wallpaper mode.
  • --window-id number — draw on the specified window. you pick the address, it shows up there.
  • --install — install a private colormap for the window. fancy little setup moment 🎀
  • --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.
  • --delay usecs — the delay between frames of the animation, in microseconds: default 15000.
  • --smooth — draw a smooth sphere instead of a faceted polyhedron. soft launch of a sphere, basically.
  • --lighting — do shaded lighting instead of flat colors. this is the one that makes it look less old, bestie, remember that.
  • --scanlines — if the window is large enough, draw horizontal lines to simulate the scanlines on a low resolution monitor. retro crt fantasy 📺
  • --speed ratio — change the animation speed; 0.5 to go half as fast, 2.0 to go twice as fast. zoom zoom.
  • --no-spin — don't rotate the ball. it just… sits there. sometimes we all need that 🧚
  • --angle degrees — the jaunty angle at which the ball sits. default 15 degrees. jaunty!! that's the technical term!!
  • --size ratio — how big the ball is; default 0.5, meaning about half the size of the window.
  • --parallels n

--meridians n — the pattern of rectangles on the ball. default 8x16. this is the checkering, this is the whole aesthetic, we love her.

  • --wireframe — look crummy. 💀 that's a direct quote, i'm not even adding anything, that's what the manpage says, and honestly? respect for the honesty.
  • --fps — display the current frame rate, CPU load, and polygon count. numbers girlies rise 🫶

🌟 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. it's the override queen 👑
  • XSCREENSAVER_WINDOW — the window ID to use with --root.

🍓 SEE ALSO 🍓

go read them, they're all part of the same little family 💜

Copyright © 2005 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.

ok so real talk bestie, this is the legal bit and we keep it 100% intact: it's free to use, you just have to leave the copyright and permission notices in there. and there's no warranty — express, implied, none, zero. don't come for jwz if something goes sideways 😭

💫 AUTHOR 💫

Jamie Zawinski <jwz@jwz.org>, 19-Feb-2005.

and that's the whole page!! okay so this was X Version 11, 6.17-1.fc44 dated 13-Oct-2026, and it was genuinely a pleasure, tysm for reading, go run boing and watch a checkered ball bounce, it's self care fr fr 🦋💖✨

📦 where this page comes from