Install zenith with Homebrew, apk, MacPorts, Nix, pacman, winget, zypper

Project links

• Homepage
• Repository
• Upstream docs
• Package manager page

Commands and aliases

• zenith

Project history

Zenith grew out of the late-2010s wave of Rust terminal utilities that reimagined established Unix admin tools with richer terminal UIs. Its README describes a system monitor written in Rust, with optional charts, a filterable process table, process signaling, saved performance data between runs, and Linux/macOS support.

The release history shows Zenith already shipping regular tagged releases by October 2020, with 0.11.0 adding process-view and packaging improvements, and 0.12.0 following in January with Apple M1 arm64 support. Later releases continued the pragmatic pattern of dependency updates, platform fixes, and metric/UI improvements rather than a large product pivot.

Adoption history

Zenith's adoption is practical and package-driven. The README documents GitHub release binaries, Debian/Ubuntu deb packages, deb-get, Arch packaging, Homebrew, and Cargo-from-git installation, while the supplied package data adds Alpine, MacPorts, Nix, winget, and openSUSE-family packaging.

It occupies the same discovery niche as other modern terminal monitors: users find it while looking for a more visual `top`, `htop`, `btop`, or `bottom` style workflow, especially when they want scrollback in charts or GPU/process details in one terminal screen.

How it is used

Operators run `zenith` interactively to watch system utilization, browse process tables, zoom into historical charts, and send signals or change priorities from the TUI. Linux users can enable extra accounting and NVIDIA GPU metrics when the build and permissions support them.

Because Zenith is primarily an interactive monitor rather than a library, its package value is concentrated in the single executable and optional build variants such as NVIDIA support, musl/static builds, and distribution-specific packaging.

Why package nerds care

Zenith is a good example of a Rust CLI that became package-manager-visible because it offers a nicer interactive experience than the base system tools without replacing the operating system's monitoring stack. For package nerds, the interesting parts are platform support, native dependency friction around libclang/NVIDIA, and whether the packaged build includes the expected metrics features.

It also illustrates the crowded but useful terminal-monitor category: many packages do similar things, so maintainers and users evaluate them by installability, terminal compatibility, metric coverage, and how much runtime privilege is needed for deeper process accounting.

Timeline

• 2020-10-25: GitHub release page shows Zenith 0.11.0 with UI, process, and Debian package build improvements.
• 2021-01-13: Zenith 0.12.0 adds Apple M1 arm64 support.
• Ongoing: Releases continue with dependency updates, platform fixes, and monitoring feature refinements.

Related projects

• top and htop are the classic process monitors Zenith is commonly compared with.
• btop and bottom occupy a similar modern terminal-monitor niche.
• NVML is relevant to Zenith's optional NVIDIA GPU metrics support.

Sources

• https://github.com/bvaisvil/zenith#readme
• https://github.com/bvaisvil/zenith/releases
• source_facts.package-manager