activate-linux

The "Activate Windows" watermark ported to Linux with cairo in C

"Science isn't about WHY. It's about WHY NOT. Why is so much of our science dangerous? Why not marry safe science if you love it so much. In fact, why not invent a special safety door that won't hit you on the butt on the way out, because you are fired." — Cave Johnson (Portal 2)

Read ARGS.md for information about command line arguments.

New Features

• Draggable overlay on X11 with -M / --x11-draggable.
• Draggable overlay on Wayland (layer-shell based) with -Y / --wayland-draggable.
• Overlay position persistence after drag release.
  • Auto-saved to ~/.config/activate-linux.cfg.
  • Custom config path is supported with -C / --config-file.
• Dynamic distro label for Linux and BSD presets.
  • Linux now shows current distro name/version (for example Fedora 43).
  • BSD preset now shows runtime system/version (for example FreeBSD 14.1, OpenBSD 7.6).
• Expanded build-from-source guides for Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Fedora/RHEL/CentOS, Windows (MSYS2), and more.

Building

Note that the executable's name depends on the target platform. You can use make install to install and make uninstall to remove it.

Xmake

I've been experimenting with using Xmake for building instead of make, you can test this by installing it and running

xmake

Please leave feedback to improve this if you want

*nix:

make

Windows (using MSYS2):

Replace gcc with clang, if you want. But then don't forget to start proper shortcut MSYS2 CLANG64.

pacman -S --noconfirm git make pkgconf pactoys
pacboy -S --noconfirm gcc:p
git clone https://github.com/wenyinos/activate-linux
cd activate-linux
export backends=gdi
make

Linux

Dependencies

This project depends on:

• libcairo2-dev
• libxi-dev
• libx11-dev
• x11proto-core-dev
• x11proto-dev
• libxt-dev
• libxext-dev
• libxfixes-dev
• libxinerama-dev
• libxrandr-dev
• libwayland-dev
• wayland-protocols

Optional dependencies:

• libconfig-dev

FreeBSD

Dependencies

Use pkg to install build tools and runtime dependencies:

sudo pkg install gmake pkgconf cairo pango wayland wayland-protocols \
libX11 libXext libXfixes libXinerama libXrandr libXi libXt libconfig

Minimal dependencies (X11-only build)

If you only need the X11 backend, install:

sudo pkg install gmake pkgconf cairo pango \
libX11 libXext libXfixes libXinerama libXrandr libXi libXt libconfig

Build with X11 only:

gmake backends=x11

Build with GNU Make:

gmake

OpenBSD

Dependencies

Use pkg_add to install build tools and runtime dependencies:

doas pkg_add gmake pkgconf cairo pango wayland wayland-protocols libconfig

Minimal dependencies (X11-only build)

If you only need the X11 backend, install:

doas pkg_add gmake pkgconf cairo pango libconfig

Build with X11 only:

gmake backends=x11

Build with GNU Make:

gmake

Source Installation

Ubuntu / Debian

sudo apt update
sudo apt install git make pkg-config libconfig-dev libcairo2-dev libpango1.0-dev \
libxi-dev libx11-dev x11proto-core-dev x11proto-dev libxt-dev libxext-dev \
libxfixes-dev libxinerama-dev libxrandr-dev libwayland-dev wayland-protocols
git clone https://github.com/wenyinos/activate-linux
cd activate-linux
make
sudo make install

Fedora / RHEL / CentOS

Use the same package names on all three distributions:

sudo dnf install -y git make gcc pkgconf-pkg-config cairo-devel pango-devel \
libX11-devel libXext-devel libXfixes-devel libXinerama-devel libXrandr-devel \
libXi-devel libXt-devel wayland-devel wayland-protocols-devel libconfig-devel
git clone https://github.com/wenyinos/activate-linux
cd activate-linux
make
sudo make install

Arch Linux

sudo pacman -S --needed git make pkgconf cairo pango libxi libx11 libxt libxext \
libxfixes libxinerama libxrandr wayland wayland-protocols libconfig
git clone https://github.com/wenyinos/activate-linux
cd activate-linux
make
sudo make install

NixOS / Nix

Use the flake development shell to compile from source:

git clone https://github.com/wenyinos/activate-linux
cd activate-linux
nix develop -c make
sudo nix develop -c make install

Gentoo

Install required development libraries, then build directly from source:

git clone https://github.com/wenyinos/activate-linux
cd activate-linux
make
sudo make install

Windows

Source Installation (MSYS2)

pacman -S --noconfirm git make pkgconf pactoys
pacboy -S --noconfirm gcc:p
git clone https://github.com/wenyinos/activate-linux
cd activate-linux
export backends=gdi
make

The resulting executable is generated in the repository root (for example activate-windows64.exe).

MacOS (Horrific)

Dependencies

Use MacPorts to install the following, then build normally.

• xorg-server
• cairo
• xorg-libXinerama

Alternatively, you can use this project instead because it actually works properly.