Bojan970
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- Jan 12, 2021
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The System Monitor app Ubuntu comes with with does an okay job of letting you monitor system resources and oversee running processes — but it does look dated.
Now, dated isn’t always a negative – but with System Monitor it is: the app’s graphs and charts are tiny, compact, and lack the glanceability and granular-detail that similar tools on other systems offer.
Thankfully, there are plenty of ace System Monitor alternatives available on Linux, with the Rust-based Resources being the latest tool to the join the club.
Resources shows real-time graphs showing the utilisation of core system components:
Selecting an app/process from the list gives you options to view more info about it (e.g., PID, command, number of running processes, containerised status, etc), and activates a big red button you can click to ‘end’ the app/process (a submenu has options to kill, halt, or continue the app/process instead).
A petite Preferences panel provide options to pick a unit (decimal/binary, and celsius/kelvin/fahrenheit); and select a refresh interval from very slow/slow/normal/fast/very fast (though tempting to select, ‘very fast’ can increase CPU usage).
If you don’t like the ‘Windows-iness’ of Mission Center – which you may have briefly spotted it in my Ubuntu 23.10 release video – then Resources is a solid alternative.
Now, dated isn’t always a negative – but with System Monitor it is: the app’s graphs and charts are tiny, compact, and lack the glanceability and granular-detail that similar tools on other systems offer.
Thankfully, there are plenty of ace System Monitor alternatives available on Linux, with the Rust-based Resources being the latest tool to the join the club.
Resources shows real-time graphs showing the utilisation of core system components:
- CPU (combined and logical)
- Memory (including swap)
- GPU (except Intel currently)
- Network Interfaces
- Storage Devices
Selecting an app/process from the list gives you options to view more info about it (e.g., PID, command, number of running processes, containerised status, etc), and activates a big red button you can click to ‘end’ the app/process (a submenu has options to kill, halt, or continue the app/process instead).
A petite Preferences panel provide options to pick a unit (decimal/binary, and celsius/kelvin/fahrenheit); and select a refresh interval from very slow/slow/normal/fast/very fast (though tempting to select, ‘very fast’ can increase CPU usage).
If you don’t like the ‘Windows-iness’ of Mission Center – which you may have briefly spotted it in my Ubuntu 23.10 release video – then Resources is a solid alternative.
