In fact, I personally prefer using htop over top to keep an eye on the system resources and the processes. Not just limited to the advanced features - but it also highlights the processes and information using some color codes which makes it look more organized and easy to work with. Htop is an interactive system monitor that supports scrolling and mouse interaction as well. The list is in no particular order of ranking. Almost all the tools mentioned here should be available via the package manager of other distributions as well. I have included installation commands for Debian/Ubuntu based distributions. Hence, in this article, I’ll mention a few good alternatives to the top command utility that are potentially better. Useful system monitoring tools like top (but better than top) There are alternatives which provide you more information on the running processes and lets you manage them easily. For these reasons, using top command to its fullest is not easy for everyone. However, you won’t find any mouse support, scroll support, no colors to highlight things, and a few other cons. Why do you need “Top” Alternatives?Ĭonsidering that you’ll find it baked in on most of the Linux distribution by default, top isn’t going anywhere. It also gives you the ability to kill processes that you don’t need.īut, what alternatives do you have? Do you need any? Let’s find out. In case you didn’t know, the “Top” utility helps display all the running processes and gives you some important information on the performance of your personal computer or server. You can read the manual (PDF) for more information on how to customize the widget.No matter whether you’re a system administrator or just a casual desktop user, you may have heard about one of the most popular terminal-based system monitoring tool “ top“. There are many more options you can add, like setting a background image as the header, change the colors of the bars, display different metrics, etc. The program's folder also has an advanced.ini which has more pages pre-built, if you want to use this one, just rename it to desktopinfo.ini and delete the other one. You can add up to 9 pages using the configuration INI file. Each section that you see on the widget is an item, and a set of items form a "Page". You can edit the font type and size of the text displayed. Desktop Info can be started from the command-line, use the /f parameter to open it as a windowed application, and this one does stay put. It will not remember the position though, so you'll need to set the position manually using the INI file. The widget is a floating panel, use the same trick (click and hold on the drive bar) and move it around the screen. This is the only way to edit the program's options. ![]() Select the "Configuration" from the context menu, or just open the desktopinfo.ini from the application's directory. The simplest way to access the context menu is to right-click on the navigation button (the square button at the bottom) or on one of the drive usage bars, it worked every time for me. Try doing this on any of the text that's displayed and a lot of times it just won't work. So, how do you access the program's options or exit the widget? Desktop Info's transparent background makes it difficult, you'll need to right click on a visual element in the interface. The read/write speeds of each drive is displayed under its drive bar. ![]() The widget also lists every drive connected to the computer, with the free/total storage space, percentage of used space and a bar that indicates the used/free space. You can see the used/total amount of RAM, the top memory, i.e., the program that's using the most memory, along with a counter for page faults/sec. Next is the RAM section which is only displayed in text. The current date and time are displayed at the top of the widget, below that is the CPU usage which is displayed as text and a graph that is updated in real-time. The application has a transparent background on which various data is displayed. Here's how I used it: Click on Show Desktop then switch to any other program and minimize it. Note: Using the Show Desktop option hides the widget (the developer says this is the operating system's fault), so you'll need to minimize your applications. The program is portable which means that you can extract its archive and run it you won't see it on the taskbar or the tray or in the program switcher (alt-tab): it's a desktop widget.
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