[ Thanks to steve
hill for this link. ]
“You won’t be out in the cold with this one. All
GNU/Linux distros come with top installed. It’s older than Richard
Stallman’s beard. Don’t believe me? Just do top in a console.
If you don’t get a (detailed) output I’ll ditch free software and
start using Windows again. The output of top is not exactly too
easy on the eye (although it is a good idea to set the foreground
and background colours to improve visibility). The presentation is
no eye candy.Here’s my output as I write:“See what I mean? The screenshot is literally a snapshot
courtesy of Ksnaphot utility but top itself is, to quote the man
page, a dynamic real-time view of a running system. If I had run a
desktop recording utility instead you would see the output updating
in real time. The manpage also informs you that the output is
configurable and that configurations can be made persistent across
restarts. Top is interactive, yes, but not obviously so. While top
is running you need to hit the H key to see the options and then
hit any other key to return to the output. Left to the default
setting top updates in real time which can be a little annoying
when you want to take a closer look at a particular system process
or what resources are being hogged by a particular
application.”