It's no great secret that I'd work entirely from the Windows Terminal if I could. I've customized its look and feel, and swapped a bunch of resource-hungry apps for TUI versions. I've done the same for my Linux distros, and it just feels like home. Maybe that's because I started my computer journey on ProDOS and MS-DOS, so I learned the command line before anything else.

I'm also a big fan of Proxmox, which runs most of my home lab, or at least the things that don't need bare-metal access. Don't get me wrong, I do like the web UI for Proxmox, and SSH from a Terminal window can do most things, but I like to have the best of both worlds. That's why when I saw there was a TUI to manage Proxmox, PVETUI, I rushed to install it, and I think I'm going to use this much more than the browser UI.

What is PVETUI, and why would you use it?

Control your Proxmox nodes from the Terminal because it just feels right

PVETUI is a Terminal User Interface to manage the Proxmox Virtual Environment. It's basically a replacement for the web UI, that runs in a terminal window with the fast response time you'd expect from working in a TUI.

It can control VMs, containers, nodes, and clusters, manage multiple Proxmox connections with profile switching, and support secure authentication via API tokens or password-based auth with automatic renewal. You can open shells and VNC connections to your nodes or to running containers, see what's using up resources, and what's going on with your guests.

It's got a long list of the most-used commands for quick access, flexible theming, and a Vim-style navigation setup with familiar keybinds, or you can change them to whatever you're most used to.

It's an easy way to add from the Community Scripts

PVETUI supports plugin extensibility, and one of the three features it enables is the Community Scripts installer, which offers all kinds of handy one-touch scripts for installing LXC containers, Virtual Machines, and various tools to make your Proxmox nodes even more powerful.

That's a massive plus in my books, since the Community Scripts site is the first place I go when reinstalling Proxmox or setting up a new node, since post-installation scripts are a must. And that's before considering all the pre-configured containers maintained by the community, so I don't have to go to less trustworthy sources.

Installing PVETUI is a snap

And it works on Linux, macOS, and Windows

No matter how cool a tool is, if you can't get it on your operating system of choice, it's a non-starter for most. Thankfully, PVETUI has packages for the major OS options, and you can build from source if you're using a non-Arch Linux distro.

PVETUI is available from a few sources; if you're an Arch Linux user, you can install it with

yay -S pvetui-bin

or you can install it using Go modules if you're already familiar. There's also a Homebrew Cask for macOS users, or you can build from source if you're using another Linux variant.

On Windows, the easiest way to get PVETUI working is via the Scoop package manager:

irm get.scoop.sh | iex

Then install Git:

scoop install git

Add the bucket for pvetui:

scoop bucket add pvetui https://github.com/devnullvoid/scoop-pvetui

And then finally install pvetui:

scoop install pvetui

Or if you're already running containers, you can set up PVETUI in either Docker or Podman and run it from there. If you do go that way, use docker compose run --rm pvetui or make docker-run, because the docker-compose up command has TTY attachment issues, which will mess with the TUI.

Now you're ready for some setup

The interactive setup for PVETUI is straightforward, and I recommend using the API key option because, even though the tool encrypts your password so it's not sent in plain text, it's still better practice to use the API.

You can use the config.yaml file that it creates to add more users if you need it, especially if you're managing multiple nodes, or if your VMs and containers have different logins for SSH. Or you can add more from the global menu, where you can add more connection profiles, and a few other handy things.

I love that I can see the usage data I need from the main page and the individual Guests, and can manage any aspect of how they're running, their config files, snapshots, and more. But I think the thing I love the most is that I can manage my Proxmox nodes without moving my hands from my keyboard, making me more efficient while reducing a bit of the RSI I get from using the mouse so much.

PVETUI shows that Terminal users don't have to lose out on functionality or looks

My love for using the Windows Terminal is almost as great as my love for Proxmox and the utility it brings to my home lab, so, of course, I'm going to gush about a TUI app that lets me manage one from the other. PVETUI is another excellent tool in my arsenal for managing my nodes from the Terminal. I still need to tweak the theme slightly, but I do that with everything I run in the Terminal.