Eww vs Nexus

Eww is a free, MIT-licensed widget system for Linux. It lets you build desktop widgets that work with any window manager, without depending on that manager. You define widget structure, window geometry, behavior, state, and data in the Yuck language. Styling uses CSS or SCSS through GTK’s CSS engine, whose web-CSS support is incomplete for some animations and layout properties. Built-in variables can expose CPU, RAM, disk, battery, network, and time information. Polling variables rerun shell scripts repeatedly, while listening variables update when script output produces a new line. Available widgets include labels, buttons, images, inputs, progress displays, calendars, graphs, tooltips, overlays, stacks, and layout containers. Documentation shows xprop and playerctl integrations. Separate build commands cover X11 and Wayland. Building requires Rust, Cargo, GTK3, Pango, Cairo, and GLib. Window arguments remain constant after opening.

Nexus combines PC hardware monitoring, fan and pump control, and RGB lighting in one free app. It shows live CPU, GPU, memory, network, disk, fan, and temperature readings, with per-game FPS history on Windows. Its GPU-rendered lighting engine offers screen sync, audio sync, and Game Sync. Users can set fan and pump curves from any system temperature sensor or leave selected devices on BIOS or firmware settings. Nexus uses its own device drivers and a bundled OpenRGB build; hardware support depends on the exact model. A phone browser can act as a remote panel, using an encrypted relay outside the home network and switching to a direct connection when possible. The app works locally and offline without an account, while optional anonymous telemetry can be controlled in settings. Nexus runs on 64-bit Windows 10 or 11, Apple Silicon Macs, and x86-64 Linux. It has no builds for Windows on ARM, Intel Macs, or ARM Linux. Companion iOS and Android apps are not yet in the app stores.