/fbcur

Framebuffer cursor

Primary LanguageCMIT LicenseMIT

fbcur

fbcur is a small linux framebuffer program to handle mouse movements to draw a cursor. Mouse clicks are not tracked and the cursor isn't designed to integrate with any other programs (if you want that, use a window system like X or Wayland). The fbcur cursor is likely only useful if you want to have a dot to direct attention on your screen.

There are two versions of fbcur. They are nearly identical but use different linux APIs:

  • fbcur: Uses the mousedev interface. This is the reccomended version to use. It should work with both mice and touchpads.
  • fbcur_ev: Uses the evdev interface. Although linux encourages this API over mousedev, it is more complicated. As a result, fbcur_ev does not support trackpad devices, but regular mice should work fine. To tell fbcur_ev which device to track input from, you need to find the /dev/input/eventX device for your mouse. You can find this by reading /proc/bus/input/devices. Unless your kernel was compiled without mousedev support, you should use fbcur instead.

fbcur takes two command line arguments: the device file of the framebuffer and the device file of the input device to track. If using fbcur, the second argument is optional (but is required for fbcur_ev). The follow invokation will work on most programs:

fbcur /dev/fb0

Here is an example of specifying an input device:

fbcur /dev/fb0 /dev/input/mouse0

To use fbcur_ev, replace fbcur with fbcur_ev and pass an event device. For example:

fbcur /dev/fb0 /dev/input/event2