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out of curiosity:
Is there a way to display system information in the upper third of a linux shell that stays there and updates automatically?

In my humble understanding this would maybe require something like a curses program which displays two windows, the upper containing the respective information and the lower displaying a regular shell.

I didn't find anything alike which is why I'm asking here.
If nothing alike already exists I am (like any good linux user should be :D) motivated to write my own, but yeah, maybe there's no need to reinvent the wheel...

Thanks in advance!

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2 Answers 2

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It certainly exists in byobu (at the bottom of the screen, hope you do not mind, ;-)), which works both in a graphical environment and in a normal tty. byobu is an enhancement of a normal terminal which you might find quite useful.

In a graphical environment there are desktop-specific applets that do that, for Gnome, KDE, Xfce, ... whatever.

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  • Cool! I would be converted if I didn't have to maintain AIX too.
    – user556625
    Commented Mar 2, 2016 at 11:33
  • Whoa there, that is one mighty tool, thanks for the suggestion, I think I'm going to try it out!
    – Mäx Müller
    Commented Mar 2, 2016 at 11:39
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IMHO while there are tons of indicator utilities, and the quicker a terminal/shell responds the better, it's not a good idea to put the load of checking and displaying status infos onto their shoulders.

But you can, and pretty easily. Just look for the screen program. With it, you can split your window to two (or more) parts, and you can increase or decrease the heights of those parts. You can run any status displaying program/script above and do your job below.

I think, the introduction of screen is over this place, but I can give you the kez you should look for in the manual of the progam: "Split the current region vertically", Enter command line mode", "increase current region height", "Switch the input focus to the next region", "Toggle to the window displayed previously", "Create a new window with a shell"

Not little to read but much less than to read for developing it from scratch.

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  • Sounds interesting and definitely more lightweight than byobu, I will give it a shot, thanks!
    – Mäx Müller
    Commented Mar 2, 2016 at 11:39
  • @MäxMüller I think you may be mistaken: byobu is a 6.7KB program, and is never seen on top. It is very lightweight, not being graphical and all.
    – MariusMatutiae
    Commented Mar 2, 2016 at 14:53
  • That was wrong wording on my side, what I actually meant was, that the functional range of byobu may be too much for my needs and that the screen solution may suffice...
    – Mäx Müller
    Commented Mar 2, 2016 at 15:27

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