paleofetch

A rewrite of neofetch in C. Currently only supports Linux and Xorg.

Why use paleofetch over neofetch?

One major reason is the performance improvement. For example: neofetch finishes running after about 222 milliseconds where as paleofetch can finish running in a blazing fast 3 milliseconds.

Note: this testing occured on only 1 computer, it's not a good representation on the performance benefit you may gain.

Example output:

Dependencies

Paleofetch requires libX11 and libpci. If you're running Xorg you should already have the former. On Arch Linux, you should have libpci already installed if you have pciutils installed. On other linux distrobutions, you may need to install libpci seperatley if its not already present.

Compiling

mkdir build
cd build

cmake ..
make

Usage

After compiling, simply run the executable:

paleofetch

By default, paleofetch will cache certain information (in $XDG_CACHE_HOME/paleofetch) to speed up subsequent calls. To ignore the contents of the cache (and repopulate it), run

paleofetch --recache

The cache file can safely be removed at any time, paleofetch will repopulate it if it is absent.

Configuration

Paleofetch is configured by editing config.h and recompiling. You can change your logo by including the appropriate header file in the logos directory. The color with which paleo fetch draws the logo can be chosen by defining the COLOR macro, look up ANSI escape codes for information on customizing this.

The last configuration is the CONFIG macro, which controls what information paleofetch prints. Each entry in this macro should look like

{ "NAME: ",   getter_function, false }, \

Take note of the trailing comma and backslash. The first piece, "NAME: ", sets what paleofetch prints before printing the information; this usually tells you what bit of information is being shown. Note that the name entry should be unique for entries which are to be cached. The second piece, getter_function, sets which function paleofetch will call display. Current available getter functions are

• get_title: prints host@user like in a bash prompt. Host and user will be printed in color.
• get_bar: Meant to be added after get_title, underlines the title
• get_os: Prints your operating system (including distrobution)
• get_host: Prints the model of computer
• get_kernel: Prints the version of the linux kernel
• get_uptime: Shows how long linux has been running
• get_packages: Shows how many packages you have installed. Currently only works for pacman.
• get_shell: Shows which shell you are using
• get_resolution: Prints your screen resolution
• get_terminal: Prints the name of your current terminal
• get_cpu: Prints the name of your CPU, number of cores, and maximum frequency
• get_gpu1, get_gpu2: Print the GPU on your system. If you don't have both integrated graphics and an external GPU, get_gpu2 will likely be blank
• get_gpu: (Tries to) print your current GPU
• get_colors1, get_colors2: Prints the colors of your terminal

To include a blank line between entries, put SPACER \ between the two lines you want to separate.

The booleans in CONFIG tell paleofetch whether you want to cache an entry. When cached, paleofetch will save the value and not recompute it whenever you run paleofetch (unless you specify the --recache option).

The CPU and GPU name can be configured as well. This is done under the CPU_CONFIG and GPU_CONFIG section in the config.h file. Two macros are provided to customize and tidy up the model names:

• REMOVE(string): removes the first occurence of string
• REPLACE(string1, string2): replaces the first occurence of string1 with string2

Don't forget to run paleofetch with the --recache flag after compiling it with your new configuration, otherwise it will still show the old name for already cached entries.

FAQ

Q: Do you really run neofetch every time you open a terminal?
A: Yes, I like the way it looks and like that it causes my prompt to start midway down the screen. I do acknowledge that the information it presents is not actually useful.