10 ms·
I wrote Task Manager and I just remembered something (2020)
- rossdavidh 5y agoI have used Ubuntu rather than Windows for about a decade now, and the only thing about the Windows world I have ever missed is Task Manager.
- est 5y agoI miss taskmgr so much on Linux/macOS. Everything in taskmgr feels so logical and manageable without extra steps.
- marcellus23 5y agoWhat do you like about task manager compared to e.g. Activity Monitor? Activity Monitor has always seemed powerful and well-designed to me.
- perryizgr8 5y agoLack of right click in activity monitor really frustrates me, especially since I'm more likely to be irritated already when I have to open it.
- marcellus23 5y agoActivity Monitor (the macOS one) definitely has right-click.
- snazz 5y agoRight clicking on a process in the list does not bring up a context menu in Activity Monitor on my Mac.
- jjoonathan 5y agoDoubleclick brings up a window. It even has a "sample" option so you can peek at the stack!
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- marcellus23 5y agoYou’re right, I’m sorry.
- est 5y ago- No global shortcut key to launch Activity Monitor. Often when the system freezes you can't quickly launch Activity Monitor either. - Can't display both CPU and memory in one view, by default It can be tweaked, but I don't like the extra steps.
- Waterluvian 5y agoI feel the complete opposite, interestingly enough. Apple process viewer and htop are what I want.
- tinus_hn 5y agoFor some insane reason though, Apples Activity Monitor can’t sort processes by the current amount of disk activity, only some nebulous ‘energy usage’ value or lifetime disk activity.
- ramoz 5y agoI have to jump around quite a bit. Largely ML workloads where I default to Windows for training / developing around, and deploying out to Linux. Mac is an option, but doesn’t make since to do those tasks there. What op said is true for me, I just pop open task manager and I get all the insight I need. No issues there. I don’t ever need to run htop locally, but is key factor in deployments where there are many more cores, accelerator config, etc I use Mac for some UI projects or systems dev. I’m usually in a bad mood when I have to open activity monitor.
- jjoonathan 5y agoThe "sample" option in Activity Monitor is golden. I can figure out why a process is hung without having to download and install extra apps.
- tommek4077 5y agoYeah, because linux is so locked down you cant access, manipulate or kill processes in any way else...
- newsclues 5y agoWindows, when it’s good, is actually great, and task manager is an example of good UI and functional backend. Linux just hasn’t built the same easy interface but of course it can do the same things, but no one has built the UI
- aflag 5y agoI think it's a matter of getting used to. The task manager drives me mad. I never feel like I'm full control or know what's going on. Whereas with kill, ps, top and friends I feel like I can diagnose things a lot better. The task manager doesn't even seem to have a search bar, whereas I can just use "grep" in linux. Just right now I was trying to see if indeed it didn't have a search bar and task manager crashed when I tried to exit it. I'm more used to have several small tools I can compose and do what I need instead of having a single app where I have to hope the developers thought about the specific thing I need it to do.
- cute_boi 5y agoI also used to be linux nerd but as I grow old I find such thing uninteresting. I wish for simple interface where I can kill process, view cpu use etc. In htop its like 3-4 steps to send kill signal which I don't like. And task manager is easy to access to like right click on task bar and click on task manager or Ctrl + Alt + Del. Also searching is generally not hard in task manager, you can just type process name and it should select it. Yes, it can be tricky sometime but most of time I use it to see process which consumes high cpu or internet bandwidth. I do agree with GP, windows task manager is simple. If we need advance feature we can use process hacker etc. I do agree with you too. So its just a matter of taste. But most user aren't nerd and they want something simple like task manager. My mom would simply refuse to use linux because she simply doesn't like cli interface.
- ibnishak 5y agoXFCE has taskmanager. goodies.xfce.org/projects/applications/xfce4-taskmanager
- anon_123g987 5y agoI like the MATE System Monitor even more. On Xubuntu it's simply: sudo apt install mate-system-monitor https://wiki.mate-desktop.org/mate-desktop/applications/mate-system-monitor/ https://wiki.mate-desktop.org/mate-desktop/applications/mate...
- Anonymous4272 5y agoIs ksysguard not similar to task manager? The only advantage task manager has over it is that it can show the rw speed for externally plugged in devices like that, whereas ksysgaurd you have to add it manually?
- ajuc 5y agoThat's funny. I miss xkill on windows so much.
- piaste 5y agoSuperF4 has that ability on windows! IIRC it even uses a crosshair cursor
- newman8r 5y agoI like to leave htop, lnav and s-tui on one of my i3 wokspaces - works well for me. I do remember appreciating the task manager back in my windows days in the 90s though.
- smoldesu 5y agoTask manager still launches through Wine, but it only let's you control Windows processes running on your machine.
- qsdf38100 5y agoSysinternal process explorer is the ultimate taskmgr for Windows, for example you can see the threads for each process, and even their call stacks! When a file can’t be deleted because it’s open in a process but you can’t find which one, you can even search into memory for all processes and find the culprit in 3 seconds. Or see what files / reg keys a process has currently open and even force-close them… give it a try and you’ll never come back.
- ChuckNorris89 5y ago>Sysinternal process explorer is the ultimate taskmgr for Windows The whole Sysinternals Process Utilities[1] is a goldmine worth bookmarking for any windows power user, and the quality of the tools is great. The only thing I don't understand is why they aren't shipped by default with every windows installation. They're so useful and no bloat, it boggles my mind why they're not there by default. [1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/process-utilities https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/proc...
- qsdf38100 5y agoYes, a lot of great tools, 2nd on my list is process monitor. It lets you know what sys calls were performed by any process, same as ptrace I believe. Super useful to debug a 3rd party app, for instance one that doesn't even start, looking for a file or reg key at different places, failing and exiting early. It allows one to fix it even if there are no errors or logs at all.
- schmorptron 5y agoMaybe it's something to do with not having to provide support or warranty for additional, free downloads?
- jborean93 5y ago> The only thing I don't understand is why they aren't shipped by default with every windows installation At a guess it would mean they would have to support the suite at that version for the lifespan of the OS. Having it separate allows them to update independently and not get tied down 10 years down the line with still having to support and old code base. This is one of the biggest reasons why pwsh (PowerShell 6+) still hasn't been included in box. There is no .NET version that is supported for the time that is required by Windows and thus cannot be included in box.
- ppod 5y agoThere was a great little tool that I think used to be in Ubuntu, but possibly another distro, where you could press a keyboard combo, and it would turn the cursor into a little crosshairs, and then if would kill the app running whatever window you clicked on. I don't remember what it was called, anyone know?
- sundarurfriend 5y agoHave you used the KDE System Monitor (on Linux)? It feels pretty similar.
- forgotmypw17 5y ago
- ericls 5y agoDave(the author)'s youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/DavesGarage https://www.youtube.com/c/DavesGarage
- simplyinfinity 5y agoDave also has his own YT channel full of "hidden" stories about old microsoft tech he worked on. Be sure to check him out, he's got quite a few good ones :) https://www.youtube.com/c/DavesGarage/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/DavesGarage/videos
- MegaDeKay 5y agoAnd it isn't just old Microsoft tech. For one, he holds a world record high score for Tempest. For another, he's done some very cool projects with addressable LED strips: the Tiki Umbrella and Atomic Lamp are spectacular! It is his projects that sent me down the LED rabbit hole, though my weapon of choice ended up being the WLED project.
- jmkni 5y agoHe also wrote a good book on Autism called Secrets of the Autistic Millionaire
- acquacow 5y agoHe literally just posted a video a few days ago about the task manager too.
- decremental 5y agoYouTube just recommended his channel to me the other morning and I spent a few hours watching his videos. Good stuff. Worth the time spent. Unique insights.
- anyfactor 5y agoI watched a few videos of him and I am just watching this video > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNy2PO3K4MQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNy2PO3K4MQ Wow....I always thought he was recording those videos from his bedroom and wanted to spice things up with tacky RGBs. Wow.......wow....
- cassiogo 5y agoHe has some nice content, but I cant deal with the click bait thumbs
- Semaphor 5y ago102 comments when it was last posted in 2020: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23304536 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23304536
- amelius 5y agoA good reminder that holding down shift+ctrl+alt isn't always a harmless no-op.
- ramoz 5y agoHow should I setup a test to find out why?
- hutzlibu 5y agoIt definitely isn't. Some linux distributions just restart without confirmation, if you try to invoke a task manager like you would on windows.
- stordoff 5y agoDo you mean invoking Task Manager with ctrl-alt-del or ctrl-shift-esc? I don't believe OP was saying either of those is typically a harmless no-op, but was referring to: > If Task Manager ever becomes internally corrupted, kill/close it. Restart it while holding down CTRL, ALT, and SHIFT, and Task Manager will reset ALL internal settings to factory fresh if it sees that key combo at startup. Same works for every app I've written, btw, I think!
- eganist 5y ago> Task Manager will load in reduced mode if resources are short, like only loading the Processes page if that's what's needed to get going. It's one of the very few apps that won't just "fail and bail" when things go wrong. This has saved me a few times, but every time I've seen it I always figured task manager was just failing to completely load. Glad to know that this was a deliberate state.
- Jcowell 5y agoIs there a name for a process like this? Very interesting approach I want to take with future software.
- js2 5y agoBesides graceful degradation mentioned in sibling comments, it could also be considered a form of load shedding. https://aws.amazon.com/builders-library/using-load-shedding-to-avoid-overload/ https://aws.amazon.com/builders-library/using-load-shedding-...
- eganist 5y agoClosest I can think of is Safe Mode, at least based on the definition - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_mode https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_mode - but running on reduced resources isn't exactly the same, so I'm sure there's a better answer. Inviting correction by people with more extensive engineering experience; most of mine is in breaking rather than building.
- alisonkisk 5y agoAlso "Graceful Degradation".
- emllnd 5y agoAnd "Progressive Enhancement" [1], although that is usually used in web development context. Adjusting the introductory statement on that Mozilla page we could arrive at something like: "Progressive enhancement is a design philosophy that provides a baseline of essential content and functionality to as many users as possible, while delivering the best possible experience only to users" ...whose computers have sufficient resources such as RAM and CPU cycles available to process and display it. [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/Progressive_Enhancement https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/Progressiv...
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- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- _8j50 5y agoYou can replace task manager with something else. These days, I highly recommend doing so with processhacker for power users.
- aflag 5y ago> I initially drew the meters as 7-segment LEDs but that wasn't localizable to all cultures (How do you do a right-to-left reading 7-segment LED for Saudi Arabia?) so they only lasted for one version or so. I don't get it. Why isn't that localizable? You can write the numbers in either direction with it, can't you? What am I missing?
- tomerv 5y agoI don't think right-to-left is the issue, since numbers in Arabic are still written left-to-right. However, they use different digits, which don't fit on a 7-segment display, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Arabic_numerals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Arabic_numerals . And there's also Thai numerals: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thai_numerals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thai_numerals .
- kingcharles 5y agoIt's still confusing though, because I can't think of any cultures that don't understand Western Arabic Numerals and use them regularly alongside their local version. It might be a strict requirement from the government upon Microsoft though. I seem to remember the Canadian government leaning heavily on Microsoft for an Inuktitut translation of their products, even though only 30,000 speak it: https://nunatsiaq.com/stories/article/microsoft_to_roll_out_inuktitut_software_upgrades/ https://nunatsiaq.com/stories/article/microsoft_to_roll_out_... It always frustrated me that there were Inuktitut and Welsh versions of Microsoft products, but no real (British) English versions of them. Network Neighborhood indeed!
- randombits0 5y agoHe’s a plumber alright. :)
- clowd 5y ago> There should be nothing that TaskMgr can't kill Except Defender/Malware Protection...
- bluefirebrand 5y agoAnd nowadays I don't think it can kill assistant/Cortana.
- ChuckNorris89 5y agoCome on, I get that everyone hates Cortana, but why spread such FUD? Of course it can kill Cortana as it's a regular user-space app. The only Windows processes I see it can't kill are labeled System, System Interrupts, Secure System and Registry which I guess, are all kernel-space.
- raverbashing 5y agoIt would be ironic if you tried to kill Cortana and it said "I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that." But yes I don't see why it couldn't (or why MS would add such a high-level protection to Cortana)
- YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo 5y agoI just killed Cortana on a windows 10 laptop and on a windows 11 workstation with it... why lie if you are proven wrong in about 10 seconds?
- jjulius 5y agoThe person you are replying to used the phrase, "I don't think". That means they're not certain, which means they're not lying. Might wanna refrain from shooting from the hip in regards to the tone of your last sentence.
- YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo 5y ago
- sodality2 5y agoApologies for attacking Dave's credibility on an unrelated thread, but his comments on Linux are absolutely falsehoods. He said that all Linux machines have some sort of proprietary blob Linus Torvalds put in there on EVERY release, for his own purposes. Compared to Windows, which is entirely closed source.. I just blocked his channel after that. https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/rb2xzk/dave_plummer_aka_daves_garage_former_microsoft/ https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/rb2xzk/dave_plummer_... Related falsehoods about Linux's SysRq (now deleted, comments relevant): https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/rva3ui/so_before_i_get_flamed_about_the_ctrlaltdel_video/ https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/rva3ui/so_before_i_g... Related, his company's settlement for incredibly shady business practices, lying to customers that they "really needed his software, for security of course": https://www.atg.wa.gov/news/news-releases/attorney-general-s-office-sues-settles-washington-based-softwareonlinecom https://www.atg.wa.gov/news/news-releases/attorney-general-s... https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/rb2xzk/dave_plummer_aka_daves_garage_former_microsoft/hnmggno/ https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/rb2xzk/dave_plummer_...
- josephcsible 5y agoI wonder whether he actually believes these things, or Microsoft convinced him to knowingly lie about them.
- ChuckNorris89 5y ago>Microsoft convinced him to knowingly lie about them He hasn't been employed by Microsoft in a really long time.
- vimda 5y agoDoesn't mean he doesn't have financial interests in them
- OJFord 5y ago> Not to attack Dave's credibility on an unrelated thread Isn't that exactly what you're doing? Not saying you shouldn't; 'anything this person says should be taken with a grain of salt, or perhaps even suspicion' with reason seems like a fine point to make.
- Dig1t 5y agoIt's pretty cool that this one person wrote a piece of software that has been used by so many people, it's crazy to think of that impact. I personally find it difficult to get excited or interested in the technical intricacies of a closed source piece of software put out by a megacorp though, unless I'm getting paid for it I'd way rather learn about the technical details of open source counterparts and the systems they're apart of.
- drzaiusapelord 5y agoThis reminds me of all those 80s arcade and Atari/Commodore/Coleco games written almost always by a single person. To think these really iconic experiences were done by someone from start to finish (sounds, graphics, gameplay, idea, execution, debug, etc) as a solo project always seemed a little bizarre to me. Of course those were simpler games but just the creativity plus the know-how is impressive. I also dont think they had ownership of any of this either. They were paid salary and maybe a small cut of sales. It always seemed like a bad deal considering this was a single creators's project.
- myfonj 5y agoMy favourite part of Task Manager lore are nearly undocumented keyboard shortcuts: - pause updates by holding CTRL pressed, - hit F5 for refresh (standard binding, isn't it?), or hold F5 to get refreshes way more frequent than with View > Update Speed > High. They might have been visible in menu mnemonics in past versions (?), or might have been mentioned in the help, but now, while still working, there is no clear way to learn them from current Windows 10 Task manager graphical interface. (Even the Help menu item is gone.)
- jjoonathan 5y agoIs there a way to get Task Manager to kill a fullscreen app without navigating a bunch of menus behind the frozen full screen?
- davet91 5y agoThere is a setting to always draw on top somewhere in the menubar. Saved me a couple of times.
- xaedes 5y agoSometimes I could overcome that problem by switching to another virtual desktop/workspace (if necessary creating one temporarily) and using the task manager there.
- themarlzy 5y agoTo save anyone else a google: Windows key + Control key + right arrow will move you to a new desktop
- eps 5y ago> visually complicated app to ever be fully resizable in all dimensions without any flicker This is still ridiculously hard to do on Windows if using standard controls as a filler. Especially when resizing by the top or left edge. The only trick I know is to attach D3D context to the window, but even that has edge cases that look even more jarring than regular flickering.
- userbinator 5y agoWS_CLIPCHILDREN? I haven't had problems with using that to eliminate flicker. When drawing using GDI, double-buffering also works. (Long-time Win32 developer here.)
- eps 5y agoThis works in some cases, not all. Editboxes flicker if they have focus and are being resized. They also flicker when resized programmatically (e.g. when doing layout transition animations) and this is virtually impossible to eliminate, but that's a separate issue.
- mikotodomo 5y agoPeople really got deep into their work back then.
- wkearney99 5y agoGiven the limited resources available at the time (cpu, disk, ram, etc) you really HAD to get deep into making things work. Otherwise it'd run far too slowly or need too many resources.
- remram 5y agoIn this day and age (Windows 10), every time I have to use Task Manager it's because a fullscreen game has crashed, and I usually can't see Task Manager at all. It opens behind the fullscreen game and doesn't come to the foreground, even when I alt+tab. I usually end up using the up/down keys to select the right process, looking at the Task Manager in the tiny preview that pops up while Alt+Tab is pressed. It is extremely annoying. I wish Ctrl+Alt+Del could open the Task Manager in the foreground...
- Archelaos 5y agoYou may try Windows key + D to hide the desktop or Windows key + M to minimize all windows.
- remram 5y agoEven minimized, the crashed fullscreen window stays on top. Apart from the Alt+Tab indicator, that is. I wish Task Manager could be on the same layer as that...
- CornCobs 5y agoThere is an option to always open task manager on top. Open task manager and open the options menu. (This was mentioned in the feature reddit thread)
- ir193 5y agothere's a hidden feature I don't like at all. if you double click on the "white area" just inside the border, it goes into a " maximized" state where title bar and menus will disappear. it's so easy to enter this mode by mistake and no obvious way to get back