Eww vs SAWAS Dashboard

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.

SAWAS Dashboard is a modular desktop widget that keeps clock, system, network, notes, browser favorites, and support-link modules visible behind ordinary windows. Its system module shows live CPU and RAM use, while the network module reports current download and upload rates. It records CPU, RAM, and network history locally in SQLite every 15 seconds and displays day, week, or month charts. Favorites can read bookmarks from Chrome and Microsoft Edge profiles, with search and pinning. The local-network scanner uses ping, ARP, and reverse DNS, and can scan every 30 minutes while the PC is idle. A speed test reports ping, download, and upload, and can run on the same idle schedule using speedtest-cli. Users can add Python modules in the dashboard’s modules folder. The maker says there is no telemetry, cloud service, or sign-in, and that dashboard data stays on the PC. Its plan is free, for private and commercial use, with no ads or subscription.