What is slock?

Slock is a simple screen locker for X written in C, primarily designed for use with the dwm window manager. It's part of the suckless tools and adheres to their philosophy of minimalism and code simplicity.

Here are some important aspects of slock:

• Functionality: Slock locks the screen and prompts the user for a password. Upon entering the correct password, the screen is unlocked. It provides a basic level of security by preventing unauthorized access to the session when the user is away.

• Customization: While minimal, slock is designed to be patched and customized to fit specific needs. Users can modify the source code to change the appearance (colors, fonts, text), authentication method, and behavior. This reflects the suckless philosophy of code ownership and customization.

• Dependencies: Slock has very few dependencies, which is in line with its minimal design. Typically, it relies on Xlib for interacting with the X server. This makes it lightweight and easy to compile on most systems.

• Security: While slock provides a basic layer of security, it's important to understand its limitations. Its security depends on the strength of the password used. If you're using a weak password it is vulnerable to password cracking.

• Usage: Slock is typically invoked from a keybinding in a window manager like dwm. For example, you could bind a key combination (e.g., Mod+Ctrl+L) to execute the slock command.

• Configuration: Because slock is meant to be customized via patching the source code, it has no external configuration files. All settings are defined within the C code and must be recompiled after any changes.