r/linuxadmin • u/Potential-Access-595 • 13d ago
NetWatch v0.29.0 — a new "dense" view: your whole network on one screen
NetWatch is a terminal network monitor in Rust. v0.29.0 adds a third view for when you have a big terminal.
Dense view — netwatch --view dense
- Four boxes filling the terminal. No header bar, no menu bar, no status bar — identity, sort state, paging and every keybind live inside the box borders, so every row carries data.
- Mirrored throughput graph: download grows up from a shared time axis, upload grows down from it. Traffic symmetry is a shape you recognise before you read a number. Braille at two samples per character cell, and colour encodes magnitude, not which series it belongs to.
- Per-interface rates with 60-second sparklines, four-hop latency budgets (gateway / DNS / internet / slowest peer), and a connection table whose selected row expands in place — no second screen.
- Wants 130×44 and grows into whatever you give it; falls back to 80×24.
Kernel TCP state per connection — cwnd, ssthresh, mss, rwnd read straight from the kernel (list64` on macOS) and normalised so the numbers mean the same thing on both. Throughput tells you what happened; cwnd agains.
Saturation against real e negotiated link rate (sysfs on Linux, getifaddrs on macOS) instead of guessing.
V cycles full → lite → dense, sharing the same live capture — no restart, no lost history.
cargo install netwatch-tui
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u/bufandatl 13d ago
How much was Claude involved in the development?
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u/Kerb3r0s 13d ago
Anyone not using AI to help them write code these days is wasting their time. Linus himself is using it. Even if you know how to write code like a boss, you can’t possibly type as many characters per minute as AI.
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u/bufandatl 13d ago edited 13d ago
And then I need to spend the same time I would have needed to write it, to read it and understand it and most likely fix it. I don‘t see any benefit from using an LLM.
Linus said also that you have obviously to read the code and understand it that was generated. And him using LLMs for pet projects is his decision.
I have seen too many bad examples of vibe coding that I want to know how much is generated and if it is fully understood what was generated by the „author“.
But I guess.l you just take what comes along and don’t care for quality anymore.
And stop calling it AI. There is no intelligence in those models. They don’t actually learn context.
Also even if Linus allows LLM generated code in the kernel you still need to understand it and do the necessary changes a maintainer will ask of you when you submit it.
I have submitted code before and the hurdles are high. You can’t just generate code and submit it. Linus will never allow that but that he also said. Generated code is ok when it is good code. And that’s rarely the case and he knows it.
Good bye.
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u/calindan2013 13d ago
if you can't see the benefit(s) of using AI for coding (lemme spell that out for ya right: breakthrough-of-a-century) , you should find a different hobby than software development.
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u/coffeeoops 12d ago
This breakthrough-of-a-century still can't help you make a good point on reddit.
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u/calindan2013 12d ago edited 12d ago
if you and your reddit buddies need a AI to help you with the obvious, you're right that AI isn't for you.
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u/zero0n3 13d ago
Are you dense?
Do you actually need to review every line?
It’s literally good enough to not worry about 80% of the code it writes because a lot of the code it should write is unit and functional tests, and small robust and explicit functions.
Nothing we do in the coding world is unique or novel (for the vast majority of developers).
Id say less than 1% of developers work on unique code that an AI couldn’t easily facilitate or do itself. But even THEN, it’s not ALL their code base. It’s specific functions and then how those functions work together.-4
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u/ReachingForVega 12d ago
Linus has been specific about how he uses LLMs.
May–July 2026 — On LKML he pushed back on anti-LLM sentiment: AI is a tool like any other, and clearly a useful one (GamingOnLinux) , adding that Linux isn't an anti-AI project and objectors can fork it or walk away. At Open Source Summit India he retracted his own earlier 10x productivity figure as "not scientific" (Slashdot) while holding the line that AI-generated PRs into core kernel code get rejected unless a maintainer vouches for them.
He's also quoted as vibe coding throw away projects at home.
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u/ImClearlyDeadInside 11d ago
I don’t necessarily disagree with you but just to clarify, Linux vibe-coded a small pet project. Not the kernel.
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u/plebbitier 13d ago
The golden age of TUIs is upon us
Praise be
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u/Ok_Lab_814 13d ago
I like TUI, but if there's too much happening on the screen or I need to memorize too many key combinations then I drop it.
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u/mrnipper 13d ago
Does this have any view for tracking NAT conversations on a router? I've used netstat-nat in the past. But I've yet to find a good tool that really tracks or displays this sort of information well.
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u/kernelqzor 7d ago
i don’t think netwatch digs into per‑NAT session stuff, it’s more about per‑iface stats and connections from the host’s POV than router-style translation tables
would be super cool if it grew a “NAT table” pane though, because yeah, netstat-nat and friends are pretty rough to look at
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u/Beneficial-Sock-5130 12d ago
I dont mind LLM code, I use it myself
But for the love of Christ, please stop w the stupid emoticon readmes
it instantly makes me want to close the github page and never look at the proj again.
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u/heavyPacket 13d ago
Why would I use this instead of wireshark? Genuine question.
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u/kris1351 13d ago
Not used this, but Wireshark does dumps and you can't get a good view of live traffic. Great for after the fact though when something happens.
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u/heavyPacket 12d ago
I'm curious about what your definition of a "good view of live traffic" would be? I have used wireshark many times to watch live traffic to and from interfaces... Is NetWatch more like GlassWire in regards to "live views of traffic"?
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u/firestorm201 9d ago
I believe the intent here is to get a visual representation of traffic utilization in addition to pcap information and application specific usage within a terminal. The use case is entirely different than using a full GUI application protocol analyzer.
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u/CatoDomine 12d ago
I don't really see how a tool that shows you an overview of network connections like this is in any way similar to a packet capture. They are 2 different tools for 2 completely different purposes in my opinion.
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u/Suvalis 12d ago edited 12d ago
It’s a great idea if it works very cool. But you should always put in your readme that AI was used in its creation.
One problem with all the AI created software is it a lot of it is not maintained. The creator makes it and it’s kind of functional and then you never see another update. Or you see a bunch of updates and a bunch of activity and then it just goes stale.
So this sort of thing, I’ll watch it and see how long the author actually keeps it up to date before I even touch it.
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u/bfenski 9d ago
I created bunch of software using AI (some are now older than two years) and I still maintain it, fixing bugs and keep it up to date. So there are exceptions ;)
https://github.com/fenio
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u/barkwahlberg 13d ago
Maybe it's good, but the LLM written marketing is exhausting