this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2024
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Why do you find yourself opting for btop or htop instead of top? What advantages do these tools offer that make them superior to top in your opinion?

top has served me well, so I'm unsure why I would want to burden my system with the addition of htop or btop. With top, if you wish to terminate a process, simply press 'k' and send the signal; it's that simple. If you'd like to identify the origin of a process, just include the command column.

I often find myself intrigued when encountering comments on posts expressing love for htop/btop. To me, it appears unnecessary or BLOATED!! Please do share your perspectives and help broaden my Linux knowledgebase.

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[–] UmbraTemporis@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I tend to go with htop purely out of habit. btop is better but I simply don't think to use it.

[–] DrillingStricken@programming.dev 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Why do you think that? After this post, I will try out both of them but maybe eventually I will still just use top out of, same as you bro, habit.

[–] UmbraTemporis@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I find htop to be far more legible, the white blocks of top aren't for me. btop just seems a bit too much for my use, so I never caught on to it. I do believe btop to be better however, since the point of these programs is to see detailed statistics about your system and running programs. btop shoves a lot more information into your face. I really only open htop to find the PID of an app or to find what I need to debloat when I'm in a 1337 h4ck3rm4n mood and trying to make the most minimal system possible.

[–] ReveredOxygen@sh.itjust.works 2 points 9 months ago

I always just grep ps output to find PIDs

[–] DrillingStricken@programming.dev 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

the white blocks of top

Did you mean the upper right corner of top? I also fine btop is overwhelming, too pretty to look at.

[–] UmbraTemporis@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Yeah, the unicode blocks.

[–] Perhyte@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Have you considered putting alias htop=btop (or equivalent) in your shell profile?

[–] UmbraTemporis@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I could, but like I said in my other reply btop is just a bit overkill for my use-case. Also "fixes" like that just seem a bit hacky, and as if I'm trying too hard to use a program. I shouldn't have to disguise one program as another to be able to use it. That just spells it out plain and clear to me, "I don't need this program".