CODEWITHSUNDEEP
linuxgccassemblylow-level-api
Keshan
Keshan

Reputation: 14677

handling GUI with assembly language in Linux

i am very new to assembly programming language. i have a little experience with MASM which works on windows. i want to know how to deal with GUI in Linux.(i have done simple programs in assembly on Linux using gcc) i would like if some one can give me any resources particularly coding samples.

Thanks !!

Upvotes: 1

Views: 3479

Answers (2)

Peter Cordes
Peter Cordes

Reputation: 364160

If you want to go "low level", there is (or used to be) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_Graphics_Access on Linux + XFree86 (now called X.org).

You could map the framebuffer into user-space and draw on it with loads/stores, instead of read/write system calls on sockets (the end result of GTK+ function calls is normally talking to the X server over a socket).

Or there are various libraries that allow more or less direct access to video RAM and video modes when your program is running on a virtual console with no X server (or other display server like Wayland).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_console#Interface mentions DirectFB, DRI, SDL and the old SVGALib.

Changing video modes will normally still require a system call, but you can load/store to video RAM. Different libraries presumably have different ways for dealing with vsync / double-buffering / whatever.

This isn't necessarily faster or better: modern graphics cards are much more than dumb framebuffers. They have GPU hardware that can accelerate graphics operations, and storing directly to video RAM doesn't take advantage of it.

But if you really want to play around with direct access to video RAM, those links should be a good starting point for making it happen in user-space on a virtual console under Linux, with hopefully less risk of locking up the whole machine when your program has a bug.

(Be ready to SSH in from another machine and kill your process + chvt, though. And make sure you enable the magic SysRQ keys for killing all processes on the current console, and for "unRaw" keyboard input.

Disclaimer: I have not personally written software that does this, but there are some examples like FBI (framebuffer image viewer). I have recovered the console with ssh and/or SysRQ without rebooting after using buggy software and/or buggy drivers, though.

Upvotes: 1

Matt Joiner
Matt Joiner

Reputation: 118500

You'll want:

  1. NASM: A cross platform assembler
  2. GTK+: a C GUI library
  3. Ubuntu: The most popular desktop Linux distribution
  4. An example of GTK in use with NASM on Linux

Upvotes: 5

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