Flying Toasters

Classic After Dark screensaver recreation.

Runs on Wayland, X11, and Raspberry Pi using SDL2.

Building

Dependencies

• Raspberry Pi / Debian / Ubuntu:

  sudo apt install build-essential pkg-config libsdl2-dev
  # For xscreensaver support (draws directly on its window):
  sudo apt install libx11-dev libxpm-dev

• macOS:

  brew install sdl2

Build

make build

The binary will be in bin/flying-toasters. Run make run to preview in windowed mode, or ./bin/flying-toasters for fullscreen.

Raspberry Pi & Wayland

On Raspberry Pi OS (64-bit, Bookworm) with Wayland, SDL2 uses Wayland automatically. No extra setup needed.

To force Wayland if both X11 and Wayland are available:

SDL_VIDEODRIVER=wayland ./bin/flying-toasters

Controls: Press Escape or close the window to exit.

Using as a Screensaver

• Wayland: Use with a Wayland screensaver/inhibit daemon. Some options:
  • swayidle + custom script
  • wayland-idle-inhibit
• X11 / XScreensaver: Add to ~/.xscreensaver:

  /usr/local/bin/flying-toasters
  

  Requires libx11-dev and libxpm-dev. When launched by xscreensaver, draws directly on its window (no flickering). If you see "DISPLAY is not set", ensure xscreensaver is started with your session's DISPLAY (e.g. export DISPLAY=:0 in your autostart).

Docker

Cross-compile for Linux (e.g. from macOS):

docker build -t flying-toasters .
docker create --name ft flying-toasters
docker cp ft:/flying-toasters ./
docker rm ft
chmod +x flying-toasters