Unix & Linux Top Questions Screensaver
The Unix & Linux Top Questions screensaver streams real top-voted recent Unix & Linux questions as they're reported. It is free, runs in your browser, and ESC exits.
Live preview
Press ESC to leave fullscreen. Settings are saved in your browser only.
How the Unix & Linux Top Questions screensaver works
The background pipeline polls Stack Exchange — the Unix & Linux Q&A community — every few minutes for new records.
Each new item eases up into its slot at the bottom of the list as it arrives.
A header shows a live/connecting indicator and the last update time.
No key is required for this key-less public endpoint.
About Unix & Linux Stack Exchange
Unix & Linux Stack Exchange is a question-and-answer site on the Stack Exchange network for users of Linux and other Unix-like operating systems. It went into public beta in 2010, and its questions cover shell scripting, file permissions, package management, process control, networking and the many command-line behaviours that differ between distributions and between shells.
The highest-voted questions there tend to be explanations of things everyone eventually trips over, such as how quoting works, what a particular signal does, or why a command behaves differently in two shells. This screensaver streams highly voted recent questions, so what scrolls past is a sample of material the community has judged useful.
On Stack Exchange sites, votes are how the community ranks questions and answers, so a question with a high score has generally been found helpful by many readers. Tags such as bash, grep or permissions make it easy to see which corner of the system a question belongs to.
A worked example
A real recent item scrolls into view with its details, then eases upward as newer ones arrive behind it.
Settings & tips
- Each question shows its real score, answer count and tags.
- Accent recolours the header and highlights.
- Unix & Linux is Stack Exchange's Q&A site for Unix-like systems.
Frequently asked questions
- Is this real data?
- Yes — it's read live from Stack Exchange, the Unix & Linux Q&A community.
- Is a key needed?
- No. This is a fully key-less public API.
- How often does it refresh?
- The pipeline polls for new records every few minutes.
- Is it free?
- Yes — free, no download, in your browser.
- Does the list cover only Linux?
- No. The site covers Unix-like systems generally, and questions about other systems such as FreeBSD also appear there.
- What do the vote scores mean?
- Readers vote on questions and answers they find useful, so a high score signals that many people found the question helpful. It is a community ranking, not a guarantee that every answer is correct.