htop the process viewer

htop is a interactive process viewer like top. The installing and using on different systems is super simple. The advantages over standard top are:

  • fast view on performance statistics
  • process scrolling (vertically)
  • much easier to understand
  • no need to type the process number to kill a process
  • tree view (optional)

Installation

# install on Mac OS via MacPorts
$ sudo port install htop

# install on Debian/Ubuntu/Mint
$ sudo aptitude update
$ sudo aptitude install htop

# install on RHEL/CentOS/Fedora
$ yum update -y
$ yum install -y htop

Usage

# 10 seconds between updates
$ htop -d 10

# show only processes of a given user
$ htop -u <USERNAME>

# sort by this column
$ htop --sort-key <COLUMN>

In the terminal, the use is self-explanatory.