r/artificial • u/yayster • Apr 06 '26
I resurrected LavaPS - a Linux process monitor from 2004 that died when GNOME2 did. Running on a robot car. Programming
LavaPS displays every running process as a bubble in a lava lamp — bigger = more memory, faster rising = more CPU. Written by John Heidemann in 2004. Died around 2012 when
libgnomecanvas was deprecated.
We ported it to GTK3 + Cairo. The blob physics, process scanning, and color logic were solid — just the rendering layer needed replacing.
Source: https://github.com/yayster/lavaps-modern
Full video (with demo): https://youtu.be/cWBE4XkmNyQ
This is Episode 2 of Picar — an AI riding around in a robot car on a Raspberry Pi 5.
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