Operations 9 min read

Beyond top: Powerful Linux CLI Monitoring Tools You Should Try

This guide introduces several interactive command‑line utilities—htop, atop, nmon, vtop, bashtop, gtop and glances—explaining their features, key shortcuts, and installation steps so Linux administrators can monitor CPU, memory, disk and network usage more effectively than with the classic top command.

MaGe Linux Operations
MaGe Linux Operations
MaGe Linux Operations
Beyond top: Powerful Linux CLI Monitoring Tools You Should Try

Introduction

As an operations engineer you often need real‑time insight into server health. While the classic top command shows processes, it is limited for monitoring CPU and memory usage, so we present several more capable alternatives.

htop

htop is an interactive process viewer for Linux that requires ncurses. Compared with top, it offers a more user‑friendly interface, color themes, horizontal and vertical scrolling, mouse support, and features such as killing processes, filtering, and a tree view (F5).

Installation: sudo apt install htop Interactive commands (selected shortcuts):

Up/Down or PgUp/PgDn – select process
Space – mark/unmark a process (can kill all marked)
U – unmark all
s – trace system calls with strace
l – show opened files (requires lsof)
I – reverse sort order
+ / - – expand/collapse subtree in tree view
a – set CPU affinity
u – show processes of a specific user
M – sort by memory usage
P – sort by CPU usage
T – sort by time+
F – follow a process in the list
K – toggle kernel threads
H – toggle user threads
Ctrl‑L – refresh
Numbers – jump to PID

atop

atop is a Linux system and process monitoring tool that records resource usage (CPU, memory, disk, network) at regular intervals and stores the data in log files for later analysis.

Installation:

sudo apt install atop

nmon

nmon is a widely used monitoring and analysis tool for AIX and various Linux distributions. It captures comprehensive resource usage in real time and can export results to files for graphical analysis with nmon_analyzer.

Installation: sudo apt install nmon Basic usage keys:

# c – CPU info
# m – memory info
# d – disk info
# n – network info
# t – process info
# h – help
# q – quit

vtop

vtop is a free, open‑source, extensible terminal activity monitor written in Node.js. It visualizes CPU and memory usage of multi‑process applications (e.g., NGINX, Apache, Chrome) and shows peaks over time.

Installation:

sudo apt install nodejs
sudo apt install npm
sudo npm install -g vtop

Key shortcuts:

u – update to latest version
k / ↑ – move up the process list
j / ↓ – move down the process list
g – go to top of list
G – go to bottom of list
dd – kill all selected processes

Additional options: vtop --theme wizard to change theme, vtop --update-interval 20 for 20 ms refresh, vtop --quit-after 5 to exit after 5 seconds, and vtop -h for help.

bashtop

bashtop is a Linux resource monitor that displays CPU, memory, disk, network, and process usage.

Features include an easy‑to‑use, game‑inspired menu, fast UI navigation with arrow keys, detailed per‑process statistics, filtering, sorting, signal sending (SIGTERM, SIGKILL, SIGINT), configuration UI, auto‑scaling network graphs, and update notifications.

Installation prerequisites: Bash 4.4+, Git, GNU coreutils, GNU sed/awk/grep/ps, optional lm‑sensors for CPU temperature.

Installation steps:

git clone https://github.com/aristocratos/bashtop.git
cd bashtop
sudo make install
# To uninstall
sudo make uninstall

gtop

gtop provides a terminal system‑monitor dashboard.

Installation:

sudo apt install nodejs
sudo apt install npm
sudo npm install -g gtop

Key fields: Process ID (p), CPU usage (c), Memory usage (m).

glances

glances is an open‑source, cross‑platform (Linux, BSD) command‑line monitoring tool written in Python. It reports CPU, load, memory, disk I/O, network traffic, file system, and system temperature.

Installation:

sudo apt install glances
MonitoringCLILinuxhtopGlancesatopnmonvtopBashtopgtop
MaGe Linux Operations
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MaGe Linux Operations

Founded in 2009, MaGe Education is a top Chinese high‑end IT training brand. Its graduates earn 12K+ RMB salaries, and the school has trained tens of thousands of students. It offers high‑pay courses in Linux cloud operations, Python full‑stack, automation, data analysis, AI, and Go high‑concurrency architecture. Thanks to quality courses and a solid reputation, it has talent partnerships with numerous internet firms.

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