htop
htop is an interactive system-monitor process-viewer and process-manager. It is designed as an alternative to the Unix program top. It shows a frequently updated list of the processes running on a computer, normally ordered by the amount of CPU usage. Unlike top, htop provides a full list of processes running, instead of the top resource-consuming processes. htop uses color and gives visual information about processor, swap and memory status. htop can also display the processes as a tree.
 | |
| Developer(s) | Hisham Muhammad |
|---|---|
| Initial release | May 2004[1] |
| Stable release | 2.2.0
/ April 10, 2018[2] |
| Repository |  |
| Written in | C (ncurses library) |
| Operating system | Linux, macOS, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris, Illumos, OpenIndiana |
| Type | Process Viewer / System monitor |
| License | GNU General Public License |
| Website | hisham |
Users often deploy htop in cases where Unix top does not provide enough information about the system's processes. htop is also popularly used interactively as a system monitor.[3] Compared to top, it provides a more convenient, visual, cursor-controlled interface for sending signals to processes.
htop is written in the C programming language using the ncurses library. Its name is derived from the original author's first name, as a nod to pinfo, an info-replacement program that does the same.[4]
Because system monitoring interfaces are not standardized among Unix-like operating systems, much of htop's code must be rewritten for each operating system. Cross-platform, OpenBSD, FreeBSD and Mac OS X, support was added in htop 2.0.[5][6] Solaris/Illumos/OpenIndiana support added in 2.2.0.
See also
References
- Earliest known date
- htop 2.2.0 on GitHub
- "System Monitoring with htop". Archived from the original on 2018-06-18. Retrieved 2018-02-05.
- "htop FAQ". Retrieved 2012-06-15.
- "Going cross-platform: how htop was made portable - FOSDEM 2016". Retrieved 2016-12-30.
- http://hisham.hm/htop/index.php?page=downloads
