Show HN: X11 desktop widget that shows location of your network peers on a map
69 comments
·July 21, 2025itomato
This seems like it belonged on freshmeat ca. Y2K.
ducktective
For this application, current best practice is using Electron stack, or better, cloning VSCode and relying on GeoLeoMaximusDYP v3.2 LLM for geo-location.
gen2brain
How can starting a browser be a best practice? This app is lightweight and does not even use a GUI toolkit. You would roughly use 20x more memory. How is that a best practice?
perching_aix
Using sarcasm. Sarcasm that you missed.
MarcelOlsz
What's that? Webarchive/google don't return much of anything.
vidarh
Way to make us feel old :)
Others have mentioned it was a directory, but it sent me off on a nostalgia trip, so here is an "obituary" of sorts, that is itself getting rather old:
https://jeffcovey.net/2014/06/19/freshmeat-net-1997-2014/
And here's the HN discussion from back then:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7925135
(including a couple of my own comments, which aren't all that intersting)
And the wikipedia entry:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freecode
None of these really convey the cultural importance of Freshmeat to the opensource community at the time, though. For a while, Slashdot + Freshmeat were among the two first sites almost everyone I knew and worked with would open in the morning.
28304283409234
http://freshmeat.net was a directory of open source software back in the 90's and noughts. It was one of the main ways to discover software.
But what is X11? Is that like Wayland? ;-)
teddyh
A modern equivalent is <https://freshcode.club/>
vidarh
I was about to mention Aminet[1] too as a joke of sorts (it's Amiga focused, but still updated, though it stores the actual archives more than focus on the "news"), but scanned the front page on freshcode first and one of first things that stood out was an Amiga program[2]... If anything makes Freshcode a successor to Freshmeat, the only thing missing is an Enlightenment theme being posted too.
djabatt
must have at least once
lloeki
LittleSnitch has such a map feature
https://help.obdev.at/littlesnitch6/lsm-map
Main difference would be that LS being actively handling connections the list is always accurate whereas this appears to poll current connections using `ss` so it may miss some if they happen to be entirely between two refresh beats.
hamburglar
This is some old school style bare bones C. popen with a big old pipe chain is pretty quick n dirty. I’d have gone digging around in proc for the active connections. Cool stuff though. I like that it’s so straightforward to read.
quotemstr
> This is some old school style bare bones C.
Which has now become some kind of meta-ironic fashion statement. It's 2025's going to the coffee shop with a typewriter.
globalnode
This doesnt pick up short lived connections or sneaky udp connections right?
kleiba
One step closer to those futuristic screen interfaces you see in Hollywood blockbusters!
rootbear
Forgive my ignorance, but I'm not sure what this is showing me. I'm running it on my home linux system, which is connected to the Internet via Verizon FIOS. The map shows three red dots, none of which are near me.
h2337
Those 3 dots are your peers, the other end of the TCP connection :)
So you basically have some apps running in the background (or foreground) that are making those connections.
afroturf
I'm colorblind and had to change the dots color. Might be a nice config option.
edonhametsu
There's a 'good first issue'-labeled issue for this from 2023: https://github.com/h2337/connmap/issues/14
positron26
Maybe they were expecting first hops like from traceroute. Maybe traceroute is an interesting way to continue developing.
rootbear
Okay, got it, thanks. I suppose it could also be the FIOS router itself making those connections, or any of the other systems on my local network.
h2337
No, for normal network configurations they wouldn't show. It's most likely your system connmap is running on making those connections.
jdwithit
It's only showing connections directly initiated by your computer. Not anything "upstream" of you like the FIOS router. It would also show any connections TO your computer, but being behind NAT on a normal home network, that would likely be nothing unless you've intentionally punched holes.
esseph
You might be surprised how much traffic every device makes.
Aldipower
Works also great with WindowMaker. I've added it to ~/GNUstep/Library/WindowMaker/autostart
raldi
What's a network peer?
jdwithit
Yeah from an extremely quick read of the code, I agree with atworkc. It's showing any IP address you have an established network connection to.
void refreshConnections() {
ssOutput =
popen("ss -atun4 | grep ESTAB | awk '{print $6}' | cut -f1 -d\":\"", "r");
if (ssOutput == NULL) {
printf("Failed to run ss command\n");
exit(1);
}
}
atworkc
Servers / Computers your device is currently communicating with, e.g. github servers when you load the link (well probably a cdn edge one)
GranPC
Pretty cool! Reminds me of the game Uplink.
apollo-zero
Uplink! I loved that game. I should find it again.
freeone3000
make sure interNIC is your first hop! LogDeleter is not optional <3
mhd
Someone should make a windowmaker dockapp out of this.
Nice. My only gripe is that the map is not very easy to read, especially on the smaller sizes. There are too many coast lines and borders, so it can be hard to locate countries, especially in the Mediterranean. Would it be possible to draw land masses in solid (white?), and leave borders in dark (background color?). Other than that, works fine on Debian Linux and KDE. The map shows up on all desktops, which I like (but others might not)
Another idea. Would it be possible to make the dots fade out, a little like in https://www.lightningmaps.org, so I could see some of the older traffic points as well?