README.md

   1 slstatus
   2 ========
   3
   4 **slstatus** is a suckless and lightweight status monitor for window managers which use WM_NAME as statusbar (e.g. DWM). It is written in pure C without any system() calls and only reads from files most of the time. It is meant as a better alternative to Bash scripts (inefficient) and Conky (bloated for this use).
   5
   6 If you write a bash script that shows system information in WM_NAME, it executes a huge amount of external command (top, free etc.) every few seconds. This results in high system resource usage. slstatus solves this problem by only using C libraries and/or reading from files in sysfs / procfs.
   7
   8 Looking at the LOC (lines of code) in the [Conky project](https://github.com/brndnmtthws/conky) is very interesting: *28.346 lines C++, 219 lines Python and 110 lines Lua*. slstatus currently has about **500 lines of clean, well commented C code** and even includes additional possibilities as it can be customized and extended very easily. Configuring it by editing config.h (a C header file) is very secure and fast as no config files are parsed at runtime.
   9
  10 The following information is included:
  11
  12 - battery percentage
  13 - cpu usage (in percent)
  14 - custom shell commands
  15 - date and time
  16 - disk numbers (free storage, percentage, total storage and used storage)
  17 - available entropy
  18 - username/gid/uid of current user
  19 - hostname
  20 - ip addresses
  21 - load average
  22 - ram numbers (free ram, percentage, total ram and used ram)
  23 - temperature
  24 - uptime
  25 - volume percentage + mute status (alsa)
  26 - wifi signal percentage and essid
  27
  28 Multiple entries per function are supported and everything can be reordered and customized via the C header file config.h (similar to DWM).
  29
  30 ![screenshot](screenshot.png)
  31
  32 ## Usage
  33
  34 ### Installation
  35
  36 Before you continue, please be sure that a C compiler, GNU make and `alsa-lib` (for volume percentage) are installed. Then copy config.def.h to config.h and edit it to your needs. Recompile and install it after every change via `sudo make install`!
  37
  38 ### Starting
  39
  40 Put the following code in your ~/.xinitrc (or similar):
  41
  42 ```
  43 while true; do
  44         slstatus
  45 done &
  46 ```
  47
  48 The loop is needed that the program runs after suspend to ram.
  49
  50 ## Contributing
  51
  52 In [TODO.md](TODO.md) there is a list of things that have to be done.
  53
  54 People who contributed are listed in [CONTRIBUTORS.md](CONTRIBUTORS.md).
  55
  56 For detailed information about coding style and restrictions see [CONTRIBUTING.md](CONTRIBUTING.md)
  57
  58 ## License
  59
  60 See [LICENSE](LICENSE).