zenity

Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) enhance the interaction between users and applications by providing an intuitive means of control. While Linux is traditionally associated with command-line tools and utilities, it also supports various ways to create effective GUIs for your scripts. One of the easiest tools for building simple GUIs in a Bash environment is Zenity. Zenity allows for the creation of forms, message boxes, and other dialog types, all from a shell script. In this article, we’ll guide you through the process of installing Zenity across different Linux distributions using various package managers, and also demonstrate how to build a simple GUI that interacts with users.

Whether you're administering servers or working on your personal Linux box, crafting efficient and user-friendly shell scripts can massively simplify complex tasks. While traditional Bash scripts do the job, adding a graphical interface can make scripts intuitive and accessible, even for those less acquainted with the command line. In this blog post, we'll delve into how to create interactive scripts using dialog for terminal-based interfaces and zenity for graphical (GUI) dialog boxes. Before we start creating scripts, let's ensure that both dialog and zenity are installed on your system.