AlienFX for Linux

Control the lights of an Alienware M14x: a GTK 4 application (alienfx) and a command line tool (alienfx-cli).

Build and install

Requires CMake, a C compiler, GTK 4 and libusb 1.0 (and rsvg-convert from librsvg to generate the PNG icons, otherwise only the SVG icon is installed).

cmake -B build
cmake --build build
sudo cmake --install build      # or: cd build && sudo make install

This installs:

• alienfx (the UI, in your application menu as AlienFX) and alienfx-cli
• alienfx-desktop-icon, to put an AlienFX icon on your desktop (see below)
• the desktop entry, the logo icon (SVG and PNG from 16 to 512 px) and AppStream metadata
• a udev rule giving the logged in user access to the AlienFX controller, so neither program needs sudo

The prefix defaults to /usr/local (-DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr to change it). The udev rule always goes to udev's own directory (/usr/lib/udev/rules.d). Remove everything with sudo make uninstall from the build directory.

Desktop icon

To also get an AlienFX icon on your desktop, run as your user (not with sudo):

alienfx-desktop-icon            # or: make desktop-icon, from the build directory
alienfx-desktop-icon --remove   # remove it

It copies the launcher to your desktop folder (xdg-user-dir DESKTOP), pointing directly at the installed logo image so it always shows, and marks it as trusted, so GNOME, KDE, LXQt and Xfce run it without asking first.

Without installing, the programs are in build/bin:

./build/bin/alienfx
./build/bin/alienfx-cli --all alien

UI

The UI shows the laptop with its lights: click a zone on the drawing (or pick it in the side panel) then choose a color, a brightness or one of the presets.

• Zones: the 4 keyboard zones, touchpad, media bar, speakers and logo
• The preview shows the colors as the hardware renders them (16 levels per channel)
• Colors are saved in ~/.config/alienfx/zones.ini and restored on the next launch
• My profiles: name the current colors to save them, click a profile to apply it. They are the same files as the script mode profiles (see below), so a profile saved in the UI can be loaded with alienfx-cli --load NAME and vice versa
• Without a device (or without USB permissions) the UI starts in preview mode

Power button

The power button light is driven by the laptop firmware from its power state, so it can't be given a live color like the other zones. Select Power button to give it a style for each power state (booting, plugged in, charging, on battery, battery critical and asleep): off, steady, pulse between two colors or blink. Write to laptop stores these styles in the keyboard controller, together with the current colors of the other zones so they are kept when the power source changes. Dell defaults restores the original styles.

USB permissions

make install installs the udev rule. To use the programs from build/bin without installing, install only the rule, which gives the logged in user access to the AlienFX controller (and only to it):

sudo cp udev/70-alienfx.rules /etc/udev/rules.d/
sudo udevadm control --reload-rules && sudo udevadm trigger

Avoid running the UI with sudo: GTK can't reach your desktop session as root and prints "Unable to acquire session bus".

Supported devices

Device	supported
M14xR1 & M14xR2	yes

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Script mode

alienfx-cli --help lists every option. Zones are applied in the order given, so -a blue -1 red turns everything blue except the left keys.

Option	Zone
-a, --all	every zone
-k, --keyboard	the whole keyboard
-1 … -4, --keyboard-left … --keyboard-right	one keyboard zone, from left to right
-t, --touchpad	touchpad
-m, --mediabar	media bar
-s, --speakers	left and right speakers
-l, --logo	Alienware name and alien head on the lid

Each zone takes a color, written as:

• r,g,b: three values from 0 (off) to 15 (full), e.g. 15,0,8
• #rrggbb: a hex color, rounded to the 16 levels of the hardware, e.g. #00b4ff
• a name: alien, red, off… (--list-colors shows them all)

Profiles

Colors can be saved as named profiles in ~/.config/alienfx/profiles/<name>.conf (or $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/alienfx/profiles). When run with sudo, profiles are still stored in the home of the user who ran sudo and stay owned by that user.

Option
-S, --save NAME	save the resulting colors as a profile
-p, --load NAME	apply a profile, it can be mixed with other zone options
-L, --list	list the profiles (with their colors in a terminal)
-D, --delete NAME	delete a profile

alienfx-cli -a off -k '#ff2bd6' -t white --save pink   # apply and save
alienfx-cli -n -a alien -l purple --save chill         # save without applying
alienfx-cli --load pink --touchpad off                 # load, then override a zone
alienfx-cli --list

A profile is a plain text file that can be written by hand. Each line is zone = color, applied from top to bottom; zones not listed are left unchanged:

# zones: all, keyboard, keyboard-left, keyboard-middle-left,
#        keyboard-middle-right, keyboard-right, touchpad, mediabar, speakers, logo
all = off
keyboard = #00b4ff
touchpad = 15,0,0

Other options:

Option
-b, --brightness N	dim every color to N percent
-n, --dry-run	print what would be sent without opening the device
-c, --list-colors	list the color names
-h, --help	show the help

Exit codes: 0 success, 1 device or profile error, 2 invalid arguments.