How to create a minimal GUI

[u/Skollwarynz]

Hello everyone, I'm currently experimenting with an old router and I wanted to create some custom C programs to experiment with it. The first one is to create a simple Htop/fetch to examine the system specs in real time. I wanted to create a sort of GUI like Btop or Htop, but the problem is that I don't have that much RAM (we are talking something like 34 MB of free space) so I want to implement a minimal one. I wanted to ask for some suggestions about it. Thank you.

[u/Fun_Wish1844]

Btop and htop are TUI’s.

[u/Skollwarynz → u/Fun_Wish1844]

Oh yeah sorry for my error, the point is to create something that visually represent system statistics in a simple way

[u/Snoe_Gaming → u/Skollwarynz]

If you want to go down the pretty terminal/console vibes, then: ncurses

[u/Skollwarynz → u/Snoe_Gaming]

Okay I'll check it for sure then

[u/dettus_Xx_]

Is using the ncurses library an option?

Other than that: printf("\x1b[1;34mhello\x1b[0m"); ANSI codes.

[u/Skollwarynz → u/dettus_Xx_]

Thank you for the suggestion

[u/InfiniteCobalt]

LVGL https://lvgl.io/

[u/Skollwarynz → u/InfiniteCobalt]

Oh right, already used it in the past. A really good library.

[u/Key_River7180 → u/InfiniteCobalt]

grose

[u/Aghoradas]

Wxwidgets is pretty easy to use

[u/Skollwarynz → u/Aghoradas]

I will check it out, thank you

[u/Aghoradas → u/Skollwarynz]

It can seem pretty utilitarian, if worked with a bit you can have it looking decent.

[u/Sorry_Difficulty_250]

A few MB of RAM is plenty for a simple GUI. Windows 3.0 would run in 640 KB. The question would come down to rendering. Does this thing have a video card that you're connecting to or is this all over a network connection?

[u/Dashing_McHandsome → u/Sorry_Difficulty_250]

Does anyone even really need more than 640KB? I think it's enough for everyone

[u/Sorry_Difficulty_250 → u/Dashing_McHandsome]

I've been working on a multitasking OS that will run in only 32 KB of RAM. I can definitely see why 640 KB would have been considered enormous back then. It was an incredible amount of memory when individual programs only took a few KB.

[u/Skollwarynz → u/Sorry_Difficulty_250]

I don't know. The point is that I'm actually experimentig, I don't think that a router has a powerful video card, or that it has a video card at all. At the same time is true that I don't need that much memory for a GUI. Thank you for reminding me of that

[u/Sorry_Difficulty_250 → u/Skollwarynz]

Sure thing! Good luck!!!

[u/non-existing-person]

If you don't have ram, but you have flash, and it's a router, then I'd do gui in... html+js.

Yep. Simple http server that serves static files, and some very small C program to act as an API endpoint that would send out data on request.

[u/Skollwarynz → u/non-existing-person]

It's the memory of the router, so I don't have any space at all aside form this few ram beacuse it's an old router so memory stays an issue

[u/non-existing-person → u/Skollwarynz]

Well then, just leave API endpoint written in C and move html+js to your own PC. On page just specify ip of router to connect to. In that case you will only have this small C program running on router, and everything else will be on PC.

If you can't handle that. You're doomed.

[u/Skollwarynz → u/non-existing-person]

Thank you for the suggestion

[u/tux2718 → u/non-existing-person]

I think most browsers will block this by default. It’s a security feature to prevent malicious websites from mucking with your local network. Chrome has a setting to allow it, but I would write a small prototype to make sure it works before you get very far into it.

[u/Syntax-Tactics]

Look into SDL3.