Skip to content

Home

Jump to bottom
toncho11 edited this page Mar 21, 2026 · 39 revisions

NXDSKTOP help

Contains details on how to use the NXDSKTOP desktop environment and its subprojects such as nxjpeg.

Starting

Use nxdsktop or nxdsktop -s for slow systems. The "-s" option will disable the free memory display. This will reduce the number of UI redraws. Please also check Nano X on ELKS instructions and Troubleshooting. The two most common problems are incorrect serial mouse configuration and already existing /tmp/nxsock. You can also set init=/bin/nxdsktop in /bootopts to directly boot into NXDSKTOP. This also saves memory, but you won't be able to use "Exit to Terminal" menu item. Also you need to configure the mouse (MOUSE_TYPE and MOUSE_PORT) in /bootopts.

Quick keyboard shortcuts

  • CTRL+A - force closes nxdsktop and Nano X, better use 'Exit to Terminal' menu entry.
  • While viewing/editing a text file:
    • CTRL+X - closes an open file in text editor. The editor will propose to save the file.
    • CTRL+W - save file

Editing a file

By default the edit editor is used, but this can be changed to vi for example. In ELKS edit is a clone of Mined editor from Minix. The vi in ELKS is a version of Elvis editor which is clone of vi. Here is a complete list of commands of edit/mined, currently the default editor in nxdsktop.

Viewing images

There are 3 color modes:

  • 4 color gray
  • 8 color gray (uses palette change)
  • 16 color EGA

There are 3 levels of smoothing. Level 1 is the default and level 0 disables smoothing. There are also 2 modes of rendering - per MCU and per band. nxjpeg has a log file /tmp/nxjpeg.log. All the documentation about nxjpeg is in the source file nxjpeg.c. In the file, it is explained that an image needs certain adaptation in order to be used with nxjpeg under ELKS:

convert input.png -resize 400x400\> -colorspace RGB -strip -sampling-factor 1x1 -define jpeg:dct-method=integer -quality 85 -interlace none -depth 8 -type truecolor -compress JPEG output.jpg

So the above command converts a .png image to .jpg, the image size is reduced to 400x400 and the rest of the parameters help with compatibility with the jpg format implemented in nxjpeg.

Limitations

  • You can not use more than one file select or message box dialog in the same time
  • All applications and dialogs will be on top of the start menu (can not be improved)
  • Using nxjpeg in 8 gray colors mode will affect an already rendered jpg image in 16 colors
  • Currently 8 gray colors mode might be problematic on the PC-98 achitecture. It does not crash, but colors might not be the 8 gray colors that it is designed for
  • Image rendering can be (very) slow. It will be optimized in the future

Clone this wiki locally