this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2025
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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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!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...Wa is IO Wait. CPU time burned spent waiting for disk
Hi is hardware irq, similar concept but for hardware devices.
lol, same!
1tgets me 90% of the functionality I use inhtop.i also hit 4 a few times to give more columns to the cpu usage meters.
From top man-page global commands:
Also, pgrep and pkill may be handy.
Why not use pkill?
Ah, that was a brainfart. I do use
pkillprimarily. I just use the other command, when I'm not sure what the process is called...you could check
pgrep <process-name>tooThat 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"...Far from me to try to
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.