Linux® For Dummies®, 8th Edition

System Monitor

Selecting SystemAdministrationSystem Monitor starts the System Monitor tool. Although things usually go well on the Fedora system, sometimes applications can go awry. When that happens, it’s handy to be able to watch what’s going on under the hood of the operating system.

The System Monitor tool provides information about how the system hardware and software are working. There are four window tabs in the System Monitor:

✓	System: Shows the host name, hardware information, and system status (available hard disk space)
✓	Processes: Shows information about programs currently running on the system
✓	Resources: Shows information about CPU and memory usage
✓	Filesystem: Shows information about what hard drives are mounted on the system

Of course, just having a bunch of information thrown at you doesn’t help at all. You need to know what that information means for it to be meaningful. The following sections help you understand how to interpret the various pieces of information contained in the System Monitor.

Processes

Clicking the Processes tab provides an overview of the programs currently running on the system, as shown in Figure 17-14.

Figure 17-14. The Processes tab in the System Monitor tool.

Processes — the Linux term for programs running on the system — are shown in a ...