hollywood

Fill your console with Hollywood melodrama technobabble.

This utility splits your terminal into multiple panes of genuine technobabble, perfectly suitable for any Hollywood geek melodrama. It is particularly suitable on any number of computer consoles in the background of any excellent schlock technothriller.

For more information, visit hollywood.computer.

Quick Start

Run in Docker (no installation needed):

docker run -it --rm dustinkirkland/hollywood

Install on Ubuntu/Debian:

sudo apt install hollywood

Install on Chainguard OS (Wolfi):

apk add hollywood

Usage

hollywood                          # run with defaults
hollywood -s 5                     # limit to 5 splits
hollywood -d 30                    # rearrange panes every 30 seconds
hollywood -s 8 -d 15              # combine options

Press Ctrl-C to quit.

Samples

• YouTube stream
• MP4 download (suitable as a Zoom/Meet background)

As Seen On

Hollywood has been spotted in the wild on television, in commercials, and across the internet:

• NBC News
• CNBC
• Saturday Night Live
• Netflix "Unit 42"
• Yahoo Finance
• Full Frontal with Samantha Bee
• Map Men
• Spy Ninjas
• Experian
• SentinelOne
• SUSE parody music video
• DEFCON music channel
• Texas A&M Foundation magazine

Widgets

Hollywood includes 20 visual widgets that are randomly selected and arranged:

Widget	Description
apg	Random password generation
atop	Advanced system monitor
bat	Syntax-highlighted source code
bmon	Network bandwidth monitor
cmatrix	Matrix-style digital rain
code	Colorized source code display
errno	Scrolling error code definitions
figlet	Large ASCII text banners
hexdump	Hex dump of binary files
htop	Interactive process viewer
jp2a	JPEG to ASCII art conversion
logs	Colorized system log files
man	Random colorized man pages
map	World map in ASCII art
mplayer	Video to ASCII art animation
pv	Data transfer progress bars
speedometer	Network traffic graphs
sshart	SSH key fingerprint art
stat	File and device statistics
tree	Directory tree visualization

Security Note

Some widgets display real system information (processes, logs, network stats, file system details) that could be sensitive. For demonstrations or presentations, consider running in a container:

docker run -it --rm dustinkirkland/hollywood

Contributing

Widget design rules:

• Must work as a non-root user
• Must display information indefinitely
• Must not exhaust memory or overload the system
• Must not be too egregious with I/O
• Must not require outbound internet access

Packages

• Source code
• Ubuntu
• Debian

License

Apache-2.0. See the LICENSE file or apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.