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Asked: 2026-05-11T03:33:57+00:00

I’m trying to develop a GUI application for an embedded platform, without any windowing

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I’m trying to develop a GUI application for an embedded platform, without any windowing whatsoever and I’m doing that with DirectFB, and it suits my needs very fine.

Since the embedded I develop for is not that powerful, I would really like to try to develop on my own Ubuntu desktop. The problem is Framebuffer is conflicting with X.org causing me to leave the whole desktop, and shutdown X.org just to see the result of my changes.

Is there a good framebuffer simulator that suits my needs? Qt has one, called QVFb, but it only works for developing Qt apps, and the VNC back-end of DirectFB always crash.

So, any ideas?

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1 Answer

  1. DirectFB has a X11 backend.

    $ sudo apt-get install libdirectfb-extra  # for Debian and Ubuntu, anyhow $ cat ~/.directfbrc system=x11 force-windowed

    Also, DirectFB has a SDL backend, and SDL has a X11 backend. Also, SDL has a GGI backend, and GGI has an X backend. That’s a bit circuitous, but it should work 🙂

    I tested it with

    $ SDL_VIDEODRIVER=directfb ffplay some_movie.avi

    and got a nice 640×480 window with media playing and DirectFB handling layering and input, so I’m sure this works.

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