ling-sys
↓ 0 downloadsSystem activity and performance monitor in the Ling Design System — dials, meshes, drums and crosshatch for CPU, GPU, memory, disk, network, board, processes and audio, with every subsystem given a voice. A LingOS app for rpi5: live board/CPU/memory/process stats from the kernel (stats-lingos.ling).
lingfu install ling-sysREADME
LINGSYS
A system activity and performance monitor written in the Ling language and drawn in the Ling Design System: line work on black, seven semantic hues, crosshatch as the only fill, Daemon glyphs in tiles, Chesilin on rings — and every subsystem given a voice, so the machine hums, ticks, pings, wooshes and dings in step with what it is doing.
Run
From this folder:
ling run main.ling
The window sizes itself to the monitor and the layout is proportional, so it survives resizing. Two PowerShell collectors start automatically (collector.ps1 once a second for system stats, collector-audio.ps1 twelve times a second for real audio peak meters) and exit by themselves when the app's heartbeat (app.beat) goes stale.
Tabs
Keys 1–9 or click; TAB cycles.
| Tab | What it shows |
|---|---|
| OVERVIEW | every instrument on one sheet, round the mainboard map |
| CPU | the big core dial, a core field mesh, clocks, 96-tick history |
| GPU | load dial, VRAM field, heat, fan, power, history |
| MEM | the memory grid mesh, commit and cache, page-fault dial, history |
| DISK | read and write dials, every spindle, every volume, history |
| NET | receive and send dials, session totals, history |
| BOARD | the motherboard map, host facts, context switches |
| PROC | the process drum and the top table |
| AUDIO | real render and capture peaks, devices, the app's own voices |
The semantic mapping
The seven keys of the design system carry the seven subsystems:
| Key | Hue | Shape | Subsystem |
|---|---|---|---|
asm | red | octagon | mainboard |
lit | orange | cross | GPU and audio |
bind | yellow | circle | memory and disk |
ctl | green | triangle | CPU |
call | blue | diamond | network |
fn | indigo | hexagon | processes |
mod | violet | square | the root: this machine, 灵 at the hub |
Packets flow along the mainboard connectors at constant speed; their count follows real activity, and each arrival at the hub kicks it and sounds a soft tup. Dials carry nested rings that counter-rotate, faster when the subsystem is busier. Hatch density is data: one to four steps, open to dense.
The voices
| Sound | Source |
|---|---|
| tick–tock | CPU load sets the pace of the escapement |
| low drone | memory fill sets the pitch |
| whine | GPU load sets the pitch, fan sets the flutter |
| airy hum | network throughput |
| deep drone | the board, always underneath |
| scratches | disk reads (high) and writes (low) |
| pings and wooshes | packets in, packets out |
| ding | the process population changed |
The active tab's voice is brought forward in the mix. SOUND and VOL live in the CONTROLS panel; the AUDIO tab shows every voice as a meter, plus real speaker and microphone levels on dB-scaled VU dials (Windows).
Windows and LingOS
On Windows two PowerShell collectors feed every instrument. The microphone dial reads a level-only capture stream: nothing is recorded, stored or sent, and the MIC switch in CONTROLS releases the device.
On LingOS (a Raspberry Pi) the kernel gives apps host, board, uptime, free memory and the running-app list, so those are live; CPU, GPU, disk and network load are not exposed to apps and read zero. A running-app change sounds the ding and a memory change of 4 MiB or more sounds a soft tick. English text falls back to the kernel's 8x8 pixel font, arcs are drawn from short lines, and one-shot sounds play on spare tone voices, because LingOS has neither draw_arc nor audio_blip.
Controls
The translucent CONTROLS panel (top right): SOUND, PACKETS, SPIN, LABELS and MIC toggles; TXT picks the script — 0 all Daemon/Chesilin, 1 stats in English (default), 2 everything in English; SPD 0–4 is motion speed (0 is still); VOL 0–4. F12 saves a screenshot to screenshots/; ESC quits.
Files
main.ling layout, tabs, instruments, the loop lds.ling the Ling Design System drawn natively stats.ling collector launch, parsing, history sound.ling the synth voices collector.ps1 system stats, once a second collector-audio.ps1 CoreAudio peak meters, ~12 Hz assets/fonts/ Daemon.otf (tiles), Chesilin.ttf (rings)
Runtime files (stats.txt, info.txt, audio.txt, mic.cfg, app.beat, collector*.log) regenerate on every run and can be deleted freely.