by Hisham Muhammad hisham@gobolinux.org
2004 - 2015
This is htop, an interactive process viewer. It requires ncurses. It is developed primarily on Linux, but we also have code for running under FreeBSD and Mac OS X (help and testing are wanted for these platforms!)
This software has evolved considerably over the years, and is reasonably complete, but there is always room for improvement.
- In 'htop' you can scroll the list vertically and horizontally to see all processes and full command lines.
- In 'top' you are subject to a delay for each unassigned key you press (especially annoying when multi-key escape sequences are triggered by accident).
- 'htop' starts faster ('top' seems to collect data for a while before displaying anything).
- In 'htop' you don't need to type the process number to kill a process, in 'top' you do.
- In 'htop' you don't need to type the process number or the priority value to renice a process, in 'top' you do.
- In 'htop' you can kill multiple processes at once.
- 'top' is older, hence, more tested.
This program is distributed as a standard autotools-based package.
See the INSTALL file for detailed instructions, but you are
probably used to the common ./configure/make/make install routine.
When fetching the code from the development repository, you need
to run the ./autogen.sh script, which in turn requires autotools
to be installed.
See the manual page (man htop) or the on-line help ('F1' or 'h' inside htop) for a list of supported key commands.
if not all keys work check your curses configuration.