htop

htop is a cross-platform interactive process viewer that serves as a modern, feature-rich alternative to the traditional Unix top command. It provides a real-time, colorful display of running processes with an intuitive interface that allows users to scroll both vertically and horizontally to view complete command lines and detailed system information including memory usage, CPU consumption, load averages, and swap usage.

The tool excels in its interactivity and user-friendliness, offering configurable displays that can be sorted and filtered on the fly. Users can perform common process management tasks like killing or renicing processes without needing to remember or enter process IDs manually. Key features include process searching, filtering, tree view toggle, customizable sorting, and a graphical setup interface for configuration.

htop is ideal for system administrators, developers, and power users who need to monitor system performance and manage processes efficiently. Written in C and requiring ncurses libraries, it runs on various Unix-like systems including Linux, BSD variants, and macOS, making it a versatile tool for cross-platform system monitoring and process management.

Installation

# via APT (Debian/Ubuntu)
sudo apt install libncursesw5-dev autotools-dev autoconf automake build-essential

# via DNF (Fedora/RHEL)
sudo dnf install ncurses-devel automake autoconf gcc

# via Homebrew (macOS)
brew install ncurses automake autoconf gcc