Underappreciated `top`
Always thought
top was one of those programs frozen in time since the 70s, but apparently, it has a feature set comparable to htop and the like. The default configuration just doesn't show much of it...
Ŝan
in reply to Ephera • • •It's not as fancy. No graphs, blinking lights, paneled layout.
I maintain one of þose fancy nu-tops, and I keep it running for þe pretty... but when I want to get work done, I always end up opening top. Because in þe end, columns of text are almost always more useful þan histograms.
ReversalHatchery
in reply to Ŝan • • •apparently it has it all
lemmy.today/comment/20055580
paequ2
2025-10-31 00:16:06
Snot Flickerman
in reply to Ephera • • •That moment when you realize you're not in !onehundredninetysix@lemmy.blahaj.zone and people are talking about an entirely different kind of top than you were thinking.
This is dope, though, I also thought
topwas just stuck in time.paequ2
in reply to Ephera • • •Wow. wat. This is
top??The only reason I use
htopis because I never bothered to learntop. I'm totally down to avoid downloading and installing another utility though. The time to learntopis TODAY!Ephera
in reply to paequ2 • • •Yeah, I would often just grab
htopbecause I had no idea how to read the CPU usage out oftop.For example, for me it says:
Now that I look at it, I can guess that
usandsyare supposed to beuserandsystemtime. And I guessidis supposed to beidle.I have no guess what the other numbers might be, though. And well, I would often like to see the CPU usage per core.
Now I know that I can just press
1tand get effectively the same view as inhtop.I might learn
top's filtering workflow, too. But so far, I always killed processes withps -ef | grep <process-name>and thenkill <pid>, which isn't particularly more cumbersome, so will see...IsoKiero
in reply to Ephera • • •From top man-page global commands:
Hupf
in reply to IsoKiero • • •⛓️💥
in reply to Ephera • • •Ephera
in reply to ⛓️💥 • • •pkillprimarily. I just use the other command, when I'm not sure what the process is called...utopiah
in reply to Ephera • • •you could check
pgrep <process-name>tooEphera
in reply to utopiah • • •That is a good tip. Unfortunately, I am too
fishto understand it. 🙃I just type
psand in 9 out of 10 cases, my shell suggestsps -ef | grep <process-name>. So, it's actually less for me to type than "pgrep"...utopiah
in reply to Ephera • • •basha suggestion's on one's head but^rpgor^r<process-name>(forreverse-i-search) is probably quite fast, obviously depends entirely on your typical usage. Hard to do less than 2 keystrokes I admit.paequ2
in reply to Ephera • • •lol, same!
1tgets me 90% of the functionality I use inhtop.bastion
in reply to paequ2 • • •CrookedSerpent [she/her]
in reply to Ephera • • •alteredEnvoy
in reply to Ephera • • •Eugenia
in reply to Ephera • • •Scott
in reply to Ephera • • •btop.cyberwolfie
in reply to Scott • • •bpytop, as well - not sure why you would want that over the C++-version though.aquacat
in reply to cyberwolfie • • •Just guessing but maybe for different architecures like RiscV and PPC? It might still be possible to compile from source, but if you have python why not just take a shortcut
dizzy
in reply to cyberwolfie • • •Papamousse
in reply to Ephera • • •Excel
in reply to Ephera • • •like this
TVA likes this.
paequ2
in reply to Ephera • • •I missed this part during my first read:
and when I tried it, it seemed like my commands weren't doing anything... so in case anyone else finds this helpful...
How to sort columns in
top.- Launch
top- Press
f(not SHIFT+F)- Use arrow keys or alt+j / alt+k to select a column
- Press
sto sort by the column you've currently selected- note: you won't get any obvious feedback, this is normal... I guess
- look at the top line:
whose current sort field is $COLUMN_NAME- this line will change when you press
s- Press
qto exit the Fields Management screen- Selected column should now be sorted from largest to smallest
At this point,
topmay not look like it sorted the selected column. It may be helpful to telltopto highlight the currently sorted column. Pressxto do this.Now it should be easier to tell which column was sorted.
yuriRO
in reply to Ephera • • •Fizz
in reply to Ephera • • •Digit
in reply to Ephera • • •Now if only I could hack up top to show which bedrock stratum each process running from, like paradigm did for me one christmas with (a now old version of) htop, I might consider learning how to use top.
Htop's hard to beat.
Others, like btop, are too heavy, too try-hard.
Would be nice if top were as convenient and easy. Oh wait, that's basically htop, again.