Soul Systems Boot Terminal

A fake boot sequence for your terminal. Shows an ASCII logo, a loading bar, a BIOS POST screen, randomized system checks, and then drops you into bpytop. Good for waiting other apps to load or just for ricing

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Variants

There are two ways to set this up depending on whether you want to use a regular terminal or cool-retro-term.

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Option 1: Default Terminal

This uses only boot-terminal.sh and works with whatever terminal emulator you already have.

Dependencies

• figlet - for the ASCII logo
• bpytop - launched at the end of the sequence

Install them on Debian/Ubuntu/Mint:

sudo apt install figlet bpytop

Setup

1. Copy boot-terminal.sh somewhere permanent:

cp boot-terminal.sh ~/boot-terminal.sh
chmod +x ~/boot-terminal.sh

2. Open your terminal's preferences and set the custom command to run on launch. For example in GNOME Terminal: Preferences > Profile > Command > check "Run a custom command instead of my shell" and enter:

/home/your-username/boot-terminal.sh

Replace your-username with your actual username.

3. Optionally, set the terminal to close when the command exits so bpytop closing shuts the window cleanly.

That's it. Next time you open a terminal, the boot sequence runs.

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Option 2: cool-retro-term

This uses both start-terminal-on-boot.sh and boot-terminal.sh. The outer script launches cool-retro-term in fullscreen and runs the boot sequence inside it. The screen effect makes the whole thing look significantly better.

Dependencies

• cool-retro-term
• figlet
• bpytop

Install figlet and bpytop:

sudo apt install figlet bpytop

For cool-retro-term, follow the install instructions on its GitHub page. On Ubuntu/Mint you can usually just do:

sudo apt install cool-retro-term

Setup

1. Copy both scripts somewhere permanent and make them executable:

cp boot-terminal.sh ~/boot-terminal.sh
cp start-terminal-on-boot.sh ~/start-terminal-on-boot.sh
chmod +x ~/boot-terminal.sh ~/start-terminal-on-boot.sh

2. Open start-terminal-on-boot.sh and make sure the path matches where you put boot-terminal.sh:

exec cool-retro-term --fullscreen -e /home/your-username/boot-terminal.sh

3. To run it on login, add it to your desktop environment's autostart. On most Linux desktops you can drop a .desktop file into ~/.config/autostart/:

nano ~/.config/autostart/soul-systems.desktop

Paste this in:

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Name=Soul Systems Boot
Exec=/home/your-username/start-terminal-on-boot.sh
X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=true

Save and close. It will run on your next login.

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Customization

All the main settings can be modified in boot-terminal.sh:

The CPU model, storage device names, and other BIOS POST details are hardcoded further down in the script. Edit them to match your actual hardware or whatever you want to show.

To change what app launches at the end, replace `exec bpytop` at the bottom of the script with whatever you want.

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## Notes

- The script uses `shuf` to randomize the order of the system check messages on each boot.
- The loading bar width matches the width of the ASCII logo automatically.
- The `\a` bell character is used for the POST beep. Whether you hear it depends on your system audio settings.