Bootvine replaces Linux's scrolling boot log with a live systemd job tree
A live tree of systemd jobs on the boot console
Bootvine is a Rust tool that turns the boot console into a live tree of pending systemd jobs, inspired by nix-output-monitor. It also shows a timeline of the slowest units, handles shutdowns, answers LUKS passphrase prompts in place, and displays why a unit failed with its last journal lines. It requires systemd ≥ 246, libdbus, libsystemd, and a virtual terminal; a Nix flake lets you try a sample NixOS VM in QEMU without touching your system.
I started bootvine out of frustration with the boot screen of most Linux distributions: a wall of log lines scrolling past too fast to read, which never gave me any idea of what was going on.
- speedstyle
Didn't codeberg ban LLM-written projects?
- nubinetwork
This looks cool, I like this... but if I read the screenshot correctly, it took them 12 seconds from initrd to fully loaded. Maybe this would make sense there, but my laptop boots so fast, those 12 seconds are like two seconds. It would take longer to render the screen than it would just spraying its usual text to the VT.
(Honestly, it spends more time in uefi preboot than it does to actually boot the system.)
- origini
Like it :)
What i don't get is why booting still takes seconds. When power is on, the hardware is on.
You can initalize most hardware in parallel, reading the amount of operation system into ram is fast.
- kodoman
I usually don't like TUI's and just want outputs into emacs text buffers, but this interface is beautiful, A nice thing to glance at that tells you everything you need to know about your systemd units. Well done.
- baq
love it! finally an improvement after 30 years.
but also no reason to not render the tree with proper graphics, TUI is an UI just like GUI is and living dags are particularly well suited to be animated.
- tkel
`systemctl status` gives you a tree already, just not live view
- harpiaharpyja
Just tried this out, very cool!
- somelamer567
This is outstanding user interface design. Whoever came up with this is a real talent.
I would love to understand the process of coming up with the UX design is, what the principles are, and where the understanding of what "good" looks like, comes from.