Top For Linux

Top or Unix Top is an open source project that provides users with a standard and minimal task manager and system process viewer/monitoring application that runs entirely in the Linux console or X11 terminal emulator.

The application is distributed as part of the procps or procps-ng package and it’s available by default in 99.99% of all existing Linux-based operating systems, as well as various UNIX-like flavors, such as BSD or Solaris.

It is the main and first process viewer application for Linux/UNIX systems, designed from the ground up to offer a ordered list of all top CPU using processes. It’s updated in real-time on a regular basis.

Its user interface uses the well known Ncurses library for displaying the information, which comprises two sections, a system information and monitoring part on the upper side of the window, as well as the main process view area.

On the upper and smaller part of the screen you will be able to view general system information about current CPU, RAM and Swap usage, as well as total, running, stopped, sleeping and zombie tasks, load avarage, logged in users, and uptime.

On the other hand, the biggest part of the screen is occupied by the actual process viewer functionality of the application, also known as the task manager, from where users can easily monitor running processes and send them various signals.

As mentioned, Top is not a standalone application, as it’s distributed as part of a collection of utilities for monitoring your Linux system and its processes, called procps or procps-ng (depending on the Linux distribution you’re using).

Top is one of the most essentials command-line tools of a Linux/UNIX system, used by numerous system administrators to manage processes. Several Top replacements exist on the market, which provide users with modern functionality. Among the most popular, we can mention Htop and Atop.