If you’re like most Linux users, you probably rely on the system’s built-in tools to monitor system processes. But what if you need to track down a process that’s causing your system to slow down? Or maybe you just want to get an overview of all the processes running on your computer? There are a number of ways to monitor system processes on Linux, but one of the most popular tools is htop. htop is a command-line tool that displays information about the currently running processes on your computer. To use htop, first open a terminal window and type htop. You’ll see a list of all the processes running on your computer, along with some basic information about each one. You can use htop to monitor system processes, user applications, and even kernel modules. For example, if you want to find out which process is causing your computer to slow down, you can use htop to display information about that process and its memory usage. You can also use htop to view detailed information about individual threads in a process or the entire process tree. htop is versatile enough that it can be used for just about any task related to monitoring system processes on Linux. So whether you need an overview of all the processes running on your computer or just want to track down which process is causing problems, htop is an excellent tool for the job. ..
The first great thing about htop is that it will show you your usage per CPU, as well as a meaningful text graph of your memory and swap usage right at the top. I find this much easier to understand at a glance than the default output from top.
Installing htop on Ubuntu
Installing on Ubuntu is as simple as apt-get… You can also grab the source from the htop site linked at the bottom of this article.
Once installed, just type htop at a terminal to launch it, and notice the great text-mode graph at the top of the display:
But here’s the best part… just use your Up/Down arrow keys to select a process, and then you can kill it with the F9 key if you’d like, or you can change the priority by using the F7 and F8 keys. (note that you’ll have to be root to give anything really high priority).
You can also use the F6 key to change the default sort column really easily:
You can check the setup options for a lot more settings like which columns should show up by default.
htop – process viewer for linux
