xboard without GUI

[Michel]

When running long tests I find xboard sometimes distracting. Lately I have been using Xvfb to run xboard without GUI. It works very nicely.
E.g. the following is a typical scenario.

Code: Select all

setsid Xvfb :1
env DISPLAY=:1 setsid xboard -fcp engine1 -scp engine2 -mg 1000 -sgf games.pgn  # adapt command line as needed

You can now simply close the terminal and xboard will run silently in the background without window, taskbar icon or anything. No more distractions!

[Volker Pittlik]

So far I use devilspie to send xboard to a virtual desktop of my choice but I will test this for sure!

vp

[H.G.Muller]

It is nice that there are tricks to completely suppress XBoard. But in general, having a static icon on the task bar, as you would have when you run xboard -noGUI and minimize the window, can hardly be called "distracting". Usually I have so many tasks running that I would have to look real hard to even find the iconized XBoard. I thought of completely suppressing even the task-bar icon with the -noGUI option, but it seems useful to have at least a possibility to interfere, by opening the window and using the menu. (In the future I could add menu items to switch -noGUI mode on and off.)

[Michel]

It is nice that there are tricks to completely suppress XBoard. But in general, having a static icon on the task bar, as you would have when you run xboard -noGUI and minimize the window, can hardly be called "distracting"

I didn't want to criticize the noGUI option. I was just pointing out that there are alternatives.

Note that one can replace Xvfb by Xvnc. This has the advantage that one can still watch the games if one really wants to.
With an appropriately configured VNC one can even watch them with a webbrowser.