razzledazzle(6x)

✨ razzledazzle ✨

okay bestie, sit DOWN, because this one is a screensaver from the XScreenSaver family (that's the 6x manual section, for the gamers keeping score) and it is so much cooler than it has any right to be 💅

🌈 SYNOPSIS

razzledazzle [--display host:display.screen] [--visual visual]
[--window] [--root] [--window-id number] [--delay number] [--speed
number] [--ncolors number] [--density number] [--thickness number]
[--mode string] [--fps]

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🎀 DESCRIPTION

okay so. razzledazzle generates an infinitely-scrolling sequence of dazzle camouflage patterns. and no, bestie, that's not a random aesthetic choice, it's HISTORY 🫶

Dazzle Ships were military vessels during World War I and early in World War II, and here's the twist: they were painted not to conceal but to confuse. like, the whole goal was to be unreadable. with these Cubist overlapping stripes, it was very hard to estimate their size, range and heading. and that was, lowkey, a big deal before the invention of Radar. the way that camouflage said "you literally cannot clock me" 👑

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⭐ 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, we're flexible like that ✨).
• --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.
• --window-id number — draw on the specified window.
• --delay number — per-frame delay, in microseconds. default: 30000 (which is 0.03 seconds, yes i did the math for you 🧮).
• --speed number — animation speed. 2.0 means twice as fast, 0.5 means half as fast.
• --ncolors number — colors. default: 2.
• --density number — thickness of the grid, and overall complexity. range is 1 - 10. default: 5.0.
• --thickness number — thickness of the lines. range is 0.05 - 1.0. default: 0.1.
• --mode string — Random, Ships or Flat. default Random.
• --fps | --no-fps — whether to show a frames-per-second display at the bottom of the screen. (not me needing the receipts on my framerate 😭)

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💜 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.
• XSCREENSAVER_WINDOW — the window ID to use with --root.

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🦋 SEE ALSO

X(1), xscreensaver(1)

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👑 COPYRIGHT

Copyright © 2018 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.

🌸 AUTHOR

Jamie Zawinski.

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and that's the whole thing, bestie! iykyk, no cap, every single flag preserved, not a single detail left behind 💖

X Version 11 — this cute little build is 6.17-1.fc44, dated 13-Oct-2026, and the page you just read lives under razzledazzle(6x). slay, thank you for coming to my ted talk 🎀✨