If you use Linux, you already know that there is a lot to be customized. Either it is the default font and icon pack or the window manager. Everything can be made to look and work exactly how you want it.
This becomes very apparent when you browse r/unixporn where users show off their beautiful customized *nix systems and share resources on how you can achieve a similar-looking theme for your own system.
However if you sort by the top of all time, you see a post made by Reddit user Squared_fr who achieved what every science fiction fan dreamed of, a terminal emulator and system monitor that looks and feels like a futuristic sci-fi computer interface.
Features of eDEX-UI
- Supports upto 5 fully featured terminal windows at once with tabs, colors, mouse events.
- Real-time system (CPU, RAM, swap, processes) and network (GeoIP, active connections, transfer rates) monitoring.
- Directory viewer that follows the CWD (current working directory) of the terminal.
- Full touchscreen support
- Apart from the Tron theme, it offers other themes such as Nord, Intersteller, Navy and much more. You can even make your custom themes and put it in the config file. eDEX also offers an option to configure the terminal through a handy drop down list.
Downsides
- Since eDEX-UI is an electron-based application, it might drop the performance of your system a bit.
- The functionality of the actual terminal is a bit lacking
But obviously, these only matter if you plan on using this interface full-time instead of something to play around with.
Install eDEX-UI
To install eDEX-UI, go to the release section of its Github Page and download the latest file. For 64 bit Linux systems, the file will be named “eDEX-UI-Linux-x86_64.AppImage“.
Now execute the chmod command to run the software.
sudo chmod +x /path/to/AppImage
./path/to/AppImage
Alternatively, you can also make it executable by right-clicking it, selecting Properties, and then enable executing the file as a program. After that simply double click the AppImage to run it.
Conclusion
All in all, even though eDEX-UI is just for fun, it is surprisingly functional ( I wasn’t expecting it to be). It can do anything that you would do in a terminal. For anything outside the terminal like using a browser, you can always switch between workspaces. So if you are dedicated, you can make it work. Now that you know how to install it, you can impress your colleagues at work with your matrix-style hacking 🙂