Something cool & useful? htop. Something cool but useless? cmatrix
There are also various text-based screensavers like the windows pipes and such, but I don't have those project names handy.
this post was submitted on 31 May 2025
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windows pipes
Wow! Just had a flashback to the screensaver era. If you're ever bored, there is some neat history behind the Flying Toasters screensaver.
AfterDark was awesome
I had plain old top and it was boring. I did not know how many alternatives there were.
I'll also have to check out cmatrix.
Use btop, it's even better
My uni lecturer me mentioned btop to me. Haven't looked back
I discovered it a couple weeks ago. Love it.
Try the btop, it's fancy
Of the tops out there, btop is my favorite followed by glances. They are all useful, I just like the way btop presents the data
For basic stats, probably just htop. But you can set any of those status viewers as the shell of a custom user, and configure it to login into that user automatically for the physical tty1 (so the display)
You could step up a level and use btop! More numbers!
asciiquarium?
I love asciiquarium
Maybe htop? It's pretty configurable and has decent bars for various resources.
Also if your reason for choosing pure TUI is just resource usage (and not the aesthetics of it / cool feeling / whatever else), then you could maybe look into running something like Sway or Xorg+i3 - those are very lightweight, well suited for single window usage, and open up a lot of possibilities for lightweight GUI apps.
It's a VGA connection and, yes, my primary concern is resource usage. I'm running 2-3 VMs on it so that I can easily migrate the VM around.
All of these suggestions, and split them up in tmux panes. ntop and glances are neat too!
This is an excellent idea!