onelifeonelove / edex-ui

A science fiction terminal emulator designed for large touchscreens that runs on all major OSs.

Download	Linux & macOS	Windows	Dependencies	Build system	Source

Download 2.0.0: for Windows | for macOS | for Linux x32 | for Linux x64

eDEX-UI is a fullscreen desktop application resembling a sci-fi computer interface, heavily inspired from DEX-UI and the TRON Legacy movie effects. It runs the shell of your choice in a real terminal, and displays live information about your system. It was made to be used on large touchscreens but will work nicely on a regular desktop computer or perhaps a tablet PC or one of those funky 360° laptops with touchscreens.

I had no ideas for a name so i took DEX-UI and added a "e" for Electron. Deal with it.

(Official ArchLinux AUR package maintained with the help of @JesusCrie)

Screenshots

(neofetch on eDEX-UI 2.0 with the default "tron" theme & QWERTY keyboard)

(Graphical settings editor on eDEX-UI 2.0 with the "nord" colorful theme)

(fx showing the results of a ipapi query on eDEX-UI 2.0 with the experimental "tron-disrupted" theme, and the user-contributed DVORAK keyboard)

Q&A

What OS can this thing run on?

Currently Windows, the latest macOS and any Linux distro that can run Chromium (AppImage package).

Is this a real terminal?

Yes. By default, eDEX runs bash on Linux and Powershell on Windows, but you can change that to any command in the settings.json file.

I don't like the colors/the keyboard layout is not right for me!

We got you covered! Check the repo's Wiki for in-depth information about customizing eDEX.

Why is there a keyboard?

eDEX-UI is meant to be used on touchscreens, even if it works well on regular displays! If you have a physical keyboard wired to your computer, pressing keys IRL will illuminate the virtual keyboard: please remember to not type any passwords if you are recording your screen!

What's the difference between this and the original DEX-UI?

Seenaburns' DEX-UI was created "as an experiment or an art piece, not distributable software". The goal of this project is to push Seena's vision forward by making such an interface usable in real-life scenarios.

Will using this make me insanely badass?

Yes.

Featured in...

• Linux Uprising Blog
• My post on r/unixporn
• Korben article (in french)
• Hacker News
• This tweet that made me smile
• BoingBoing article - Apparently i'm a "French hacker" lol
• OReilly 4 short links
• Hackaday
• Developpez.com (another french link)
• GitHub Blog's Release Radar November 2018

Useful commands for the nerds

Starting from source:

IMPORTANT NOTE: the following instructions are meant for DEVELOPERS ONLY. If you're just a casual user please download the precompiled binaries available on the Releases tab.

on *nix systems (You'll need the Xcode command line tools on macOS):

• clone the repository
• npm run install-linux
• npm start

on Windows:

• start cmd or powershell as administrator
• clone the repository
• npm run install-windows
• npm start

Building

Note: Due to native modules, you can only compile binaries for the OS you are compiling from. Note²: It is recommended to start building from a fresh clone to prevent the code minifier script from parsing an entire node_modules folder.

• make a fresh clone (recommended)
• npm install (NOT install-linux or install-windows)
• npm run build-linux or build-windows or build-darwin

Resulting binaries and assets will be in the dist folder.

Credits

eDEX-UI's source code was primarily written by me, Squared. If you want to get in touch with me or find other projects I'm involved in, check out my website.

PixelyIon helped me get started with Windows compatibility and offered some precious advice when I started to work on this project seriously.

Thanks

Of course, eDEX would never have existed if I hadn't stumbled upon the amazing work of Seena on r/unixporn.

This project uses a bunch of open-source libraries, frameworks and tools, see the full dependency graph.

I want to namely thank the developers behind xterm.js, systeminformation and SmoothieCharts.

Huge thanks to Rob "Arscan" Scanlon for making the fantastic ENCOM Globe, also inspired by the TRON: Legacy movie, and distributing it freely. His work really puts the icing on the cake.