htop - Task Manager for Linux (including Raspbian!)

A Useful Tool

Whether I'm on a headless ubuntu server or messing around on my Raspberry Pi, htop proves to be a useful tool. Htop is task manager or 'process viewer' as the founder, Hisham Muhammad and the project contributors refer to the program. Hisham's other projects can be found here

Quick Install

sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get upgrade sudo apt-get install htop

Just like that, htop is installed.

Run

Fire up htop with this simple command...

htop

Layout

Once the program is up and running you'll see a large list of processes. In the top left corner of the screen you'll see your gauges. The gauges show you the system's CPU, memory and memory swap usages. Across the bottom of the screen you see several menu items.

Useful Menu Items

F1 - Help (explains everything, always nice)

F6 - SortBy (You can sort the list processes with this option. Sorting by user, CPU usage and memory usage can be useful.)

F9 - Kill (You can select a process and send a kill signal)

F10 - Quit (sometimes you gotta leave htop)

Raspberry Pi Users

Good news, htop works on raspbian, so be sure to add it to you toolbox!