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bpytop might be the freaking-coolest way to monitor your Linux system

By - | Views: 52,640

Okay, hear me out. You want to keep an eye on your system for things like RAM use, disk space, processor load and more…but you want something a tiny bit flashy that's still simple enough to run in a terminal window? You need to try out bpytop.

It's a fully featured resource monitor with a "game inspired menu system" and it's genuinely great, I've fallen just a little bit in love with it having it open on my second monitor to keep me informed of how my system is doing. Just look at how gosh-darn awesome it looks:

Thanks to the process selection feature, you can also use it to send "SIGTERM, SIGKILL, SIGINT" to individual processes if you need to get rid of them or if they're stuck. I can see this being incredibly useful. It does practically everything you need and it looks good while doing so.

bpytop is actually a port to Python of another project named bashtop, with the creator suggesting people move on over to bpytop due to it being faster, less resource hungry, mouse support, graphs for memory consumption and more new advanced features.

Their "game inspired" menu is a nice bit of fluff too, giving you a quick and easy way to adjust various settings - very much like you actually would find in a game.

The developer appears to have plans to expand it too with GPU support for temperatures and load, options for resizing all boxes, CPU and mem stats for docker containers (if possible) and the usual optimizations.

As a bit of icing on the cake, you can theme it too.

Check bpytop out on GitHub.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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About the author -
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I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
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25 comments
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kean Oct 15, 2020
wow, this is exactly what I needed, I used nmon but this looks more promising.
libgradev Oct 15, 2020
Yeah I tripped across this a couple of months ago and it's my go to system monitor now


Last edited by libgradev on 15 October 2020 at 3:30 pm UTC
brokeassben Oct 15, 2020
Nice! I've been using Bashtop (which is great) and this looks like it includes a bunch of improvements on it. Bashtop is arguably a better/catchier name, though. It's extremely useful to use over a terminal SSH session.
syntonym Oct 15, 2020
There is also glances, which is less flashy and has a more top-like look. It also has some more information visible per default and disk IO.
slaapliedje Oct 15, 2020
Quoting: brokeassbenNice! I've been using Bashtop (which is great) and this looks like it includes a bunch of improvements on it. Bashtop is arguably a better/catchier name, though. It's extremely useful to use over a terminal SSH session.
I was going to ask how this is different from bashtop, as they both look pretty.
brokeassben Oct 15, 2020
Quoting: slaapliedjeI was going to ask how this is different from bashtop, as they both look pretty.
Looks like it's the same person who was developing bashtop. This is a quote from their GitHub that Liam touched on:

QuoteIt's a lot faster and about a third as cpu heavy and has more features, including:
  • Mouse support

  • Toggleable mini mode

  • More customization

  • Graphs for memory consumption

It's also a lot easier for me to bug fix and it's the project I'm actively working on, so please try to migrate to bpytop.
liberodark Oct 15, 2020
same as bashtop :(
gustavoyaraujo Oct 15, 2020
That's maybe the best ever written python application.
Liam Dawe Oct 15, 2020
Quoting: liberodarksame as bashtop :(
Do people just not bother reading the article any more or what?
BielFPs Oct 15, 2020
Quoting: Liam Dawe
Quoting: liberodarksame as bashtop :(
Do people just not bother reading the article any more or what?

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