Add Cinematic Animations to Your Terminal with Hollywood

What is Hollywood?

Hollywood is a small, humorous yet powerful command‑line tool that adds cinematic animation effects to terminal output. It runs inside Byobu, a text‑based window manager, and can launch multiple split‑screen panes each running a monitoring command.

Installation

The source code is hosted on GitHub at https://github.com/dustinkirkland/hollywood. On Debian‑based systems you can install it directly:

apt install -y hollywood

Key Features

Creates multiple Byobu panes, each executing a text‑based application.

Applications must not require root, must not exhaust resources, and must not need internet access.

Supported apps include atop, bmon, cmatrix, glances, htop, ifstat, and many others.

These apps can continuously output system information such as processes, memory, and network statistics.

Hollywood transforms these outputs into animated visualizations, turning system monitoring into an eye‑catching display.

Users can choose the combination of applications that best fits their terminal size and system configuration.

The tool offers virtually unlimited possibilities to “decorate” the command line, making otherwise dull monitoring enjoyable.

Recommended Monitoring Commands

Typical programs that work well with Hollywood include:

atop – system and process monitor (requires root).

bmon – network bandwidth monitor.

cmatrix – matrix‑style rain animation.

dnstop – DNS traffic statistics (requires root).

ethstatus – network interface traffic.

glances – multi‑dimensional system monitor.

htop – interactive process viewer.

ifstat – network interface statistics.

iotop – I/O usage monitor.

iptotal – iptables status.

iptraf‑ng – network traffic monitor.

itop – I/O performance monitor.

jnettop – per‑connection traffic top.

kerneltop – real‑time kernel information.

latencytop – system latency analysis.

logtop – real‑time log file activity.

netmrg – network traffic monitor.

nload – current network usage.

nmon – comprehensive system monitor.

ntop – network traffic analysis.

powertop – power consumption detection.

sagan – system and network activity visualization.

slurm – system resource and process monitor.

snetz – network traffic monitor.

top – classic Linux process monitor.

tiptop – terminal mode version of top.

vnstat – network traffic statistics.

Conclusion

By combining Hollywood with a suitable set of lightweight monitoring tools, you can create a highly personalized and visually appealing terminal dashboard that turns routine system checks into an engaging experience.