Linux Administration Cookbook

htop

htop is like top, but prettier. If a box is under my control (and providing the appropriate approval has been given), you're very likely to find htop installed.

In a pinch, top is fine, and you're guaranteed to find it pre-installed on a box, but if you want something that doesn't feel like it's from the 1970s, htop is extremely helpful.

Here's htop on our centos1 VM:

Note that we still have all the same information that top gives us, only now we've made use of what a modern Terminal emulator can do, giving us colors by default, and nicely aligning output into a window that also supports mouse input (try it!).

Further to top, we have ...