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Btop: A better modern alternative of htop with a gamified interface
- dkdcio 1y agoI wouldn’t call it “gamified” but I do love btop. the one thing missing for me is GPU usage on MacOS (I use asitop for that)
- nasretdinov 1y agoI've been searching for something that would be able to show me all the stats I care about (cpu, memory, disk and network usage) on a single screen, and btop so far has been quite good at this role. It has a bit weird controls to my taste, but reading the manual works I guess :)
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- nchmy 1y agoWhat about btop is gamified?
- leetrout 1y agoPoor editorialized title.
- reaperducer 1y agoPoor editorialized title. "Editorialized" implied deceit was intended. It looks to me like the submitter was trying to be descriptive. The very first item in the feature list is > Easy to use, with a game inspired menu system.
- notnmeyer 1y agotaking inspiration from a game doesn’t mean “gamified”.
- kgwgk 1y agoJust like editing a title doesn't mean "editorialized".
- skopje 1y agoright? that is not gamification. there's no reward system to make one want progression, or addiction. that said a enjoy looking at code for projects that are multi os so cheers for op.
- benatkin 1y agoThat isn't what gamified means, and one should not be using such a term without knowing what it means. When in doubt, stick to simpler descriptions. Hence calling it poorly editorialized.
- reaperducer 1y agoHence calling it poorly editorialized. "Poorly described" would be correct. "Editorialized" does not mean what you think it means. See my previous comment.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- benatkin 1y agoTo me, gamelike user interface would be simply editorialized, while gamified user interface would be poorly editoralized. One is editoralized with an opinion, the other also has an error. It isn't a fact that it's gamelike over all, nor is it how it's described in the README - the author says "with a game inspired menu system" which is a far cry from game-esque, game-like, game-ified, etc.
- pama 1y agoWhich has no relation to the word gamified. So the editorialized title is misleading. Editorialized here simply means applying editor-level changes to the title of the website to express an opinion. No deceit is implied. It is against HN guidelines unless the title is unclear or does not fit.
- 0xCMP 1y agoNo one was, nor was implied to be, deceptive. They described it in their own words and the word they chose is clearly inaccurate or misused. That's all. They could have described it as "game-like design" or something else.
- zargon 1y agoEditorialized simply means expressing an opinion (as in an editorial). The word has no connotation implying deceit.
- Bjartr 1y agoMerriam-Webster defines editorialized as "to introduce opinion into the reporting of facts" It was the submitter's opinion that "gamified" was an accurate description for this page instead of using the actual title of the page. So while "editorialized" is a little formal, it is correct. Reporting on controversial issues is often editorialized, which may be where your feeling that it relates to deceit is coming from.
- benatkin 1y agoWhile I can't tell exactly what the author is thinking, the opinion that I see is that it feels a lot like a video game. The author said "game inspired menu system" which is a far cry from game-like user interface, which would be a corrected version of gamified user interface. That does seem obviously like an opinion, however there are some things that don't seem like an opinion that can still be considered an opinion. This fits a whole class of headlines, which are described as editorialized, some of which seem more opinionated than this and some which seem less opinionated. I'm not sure whether it's better wrangle the use of opinion and the definition of opinion to make these satisfy the dictionary definition of editorialized or accept that the use of language has evolved and it's better not to be overly prescriptive.
- Bjartr 11mo agoThe opinion is that the title should be something different than the author wrote for the page.
- benatkin 11mo agoThat would be a fact in this case, because "Btop - Resource monitor that shows usage and stats for processor, memory, disks, network and processes" is too long for a HN submission
- vismit2000 1y agoApologizing for poor choice of words (English not being my first language). TIL what "gamification" actually means. This was due to ignorance of guidelines and not disregard for them. Will take care from next time.
- pwdisswordfishy 1y agoYou get 50 points for every process you kill.
- gorgoiler 1y agoI don't know if this is the official answer but if you've ever played DOOM and pressed Esc then you'll feel right at home using btop! DOOM ==== :) NEW GAME OPTIONS LOAD GAME SAVE GAME QUIT Compare with: BTOP++ ==== v1.3.2 -> OPTIONS HELP QUIT Apart from that, there are not other gaming mechanics.
- OneDeuxTriSeiGo 1y agoIf you miss the quick time event it SIGKILLs PID1
- criemen 1y ago> modern alternative Anyone remember top? I was so happy to switch to htop that had colors!
- andrewshadura 1y agoAnd htop is still good enough.
- petepete 1y agoJust press z in top for glorious colour.
- zamadatix 1y agoWaiting for neobtop++ to output a full GUI system monitor using sixels.
- jauntywundrkind 1y agoNot the same kind of monitor tool exactly, but, I keep finding dstat hard to leave behind. Because I can see the past there! So many of these monitors have one or two or three over time graphs, but most of the information is ephemeral, only shows right now. But I really want to see network use, disk use, paging, context switching/interrupts over time! There is also Below. Which has a much more htop/btop like interface than dstat. Below records system info over time, and allows time travel! However, it's not as convenient as dstat, not at a glance, as one has to to scrub through time. But it is pretty impressive system monitoring, great for what it is! It's per-process pressure metrics are also utterly unbeatable. The way it rolls up cgroups is also stellar. https://github.com/facebookincubator/below https://github.com/facebookincubator/below
- EgregiousCube 1y agoI really like the new wave of TUI aesthetic that's been worming its way into Linux user interfaces lately. Check out Omarchy's desktop distro if you want more of that aesthetic throughout your OS, it does a good job if that's the look and feel you want.
- aidenn0 1y agoBtop really captures that '90s warez group feel.
- shevy-java 1y agoI am all in favour of better TUIs. Omarchy unfortunately does not interest me ever since DHH decided to take more control of the ruby-ecosystem via shopify.
- skydhash 1y agoAnd I really dislike them. The nice thing about CLI is that you can compose them quite easily. You can compose your own report giving you what you want and none of what you don’t want. And most of those TUI are badly designed in terms of configurability. Especially the ise of colors and “effects”.
- WD-42 1y agoTUI and CLI are not the same thing. TUI is a GUI, and GUIs have never been composable.
- jolmg 1y agoI think they understand that. They're saying they dislike TUIs and prefer CLIs because CLIs are composable.
- somat 1y ago> and GUIs have never been composable. Sure they have, or at least it has been tried. I think it turns out to be such a hard problem to solve that it degrades into proper programing much faster than a cli where pipes can carry hard. Some examples: The first xerox alto interface. smalltalk Microsofts OLE
- bwblabs 1y agoI recently found out https://github.com/ClementTsang/bottom#readme https://github.com/ClementTsang/bottom#readme (cargo install bottom; executable btm), it's a pretty great improvement over htop I was using before.
- coconut08 1y agoi dont think they could have possibly chosen a word to make me want to use it less than gamified.
- mouse_ 1y agoagree
- sorokod 1y agoWould a mention of loot boxes move you?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- tom_ 1y agoIt's not obviously the project's choice itself. See thread here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45857774 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45857774
- forgotpwd16 1y agoThe project simply has "game inspired menu system". OP, probably unaware for what gamify truly means, used this term. That said a gamified system monitor will've been quite funny project to see. "Achievement unlocked: Run out of memory!"
- clickety_clack 1y agoGPU at 90°C: New high score!
- b112 1y agoThere was something years ago, Doom, but all the monsters were PIDs. If you wanted a process dead, you shot it.
- onraglanroad 1y agopsDooM. It's still available https://psdoom.sourceforge.net/download.html https://psdoom.sourceforge.net/download.html
- ashton314 1y agoMy favorite part about btop is how smooth the color gradient is from the top of the process list to the bottom. Soooo smooooth…
- shevy-java 1y agoDoes anyone know the difference? I have been using htop since about 20 years. Is btop basically just extending where it can run?
- doublerabbit 1y agoEnhanced stats reporting really. Shows you processes, network throughput et cetera.
- simlevesque 1y agoLots of quality of life changes. Maybe some of them can be done in htop but with btop it's right in your face: - CPU usage graph (global and per cpu) - CPU temp + graph - GPU usage - Memory graphs - Disks space infos + real-time IO - Network graph, one for each network device, upload/download stats since opening the app - Per program cpu graph, memory graph You should try it.
- shiomiru 1y agoI switched because btop provides vi-like keybindings. For htop I think you have to use a fork to get that.
- petepete 1y agoI like btop but as someone who keeps their config files under source control it's a bit annoying that anything you do in the application results in config file changes.
- ivanjermakov 1y agohtop does the same and it is indeed annoying!
- flatiron 1y agoMy htop file is read only. But it’s silly that you need to do that.
- synergy20 1y agobtop is my default 'top' these days, has everything htop/top provides plus it shows the usage of GPUs.
- 201984 1y agohtop has GPU usage too, it's just not at the top by default.
- synergy20 1y agoare you sure about that? how? I could not find the magic button to show gpu yet.
- 201984 1y agoPress F2 to go to setup, then go to "Meters" on the left. Under "Available Meters" you should see "GPU usage", which can be added to the status meters at the top. Available options for format are "Bar", "Text", "Graph", and "LED". I'm using 3.4.1, so it's possible you have an older version that doesn't have it.
- synergy20 1y agoubuntu 24.04 had version 1.3.0, not there yet.
- embedding-shape 1y agoSeems to only be "Current GPU utilization", as far as I can tell. btop in contrast, currently shows me: GPU utilization (graph/historic+current), clock speed, power-state, power usage, encoding/decoding utilization, VRAM frequency, VRAM bandwidth utilization (graph+current) + VRAM total/free usage and finally the current transmit/receive rate to/from VRAM.
- 201984 1y agoYeah, it's not as detailed for sure. You can set it to show a graph of GPU utilization over the last minute or so, but that's about it.
- billfor 1y agoYou get this for free if you upgrade to Debian 12. It's in the repos.
- someguyiguess 1y agoIt’s free anyway
- sgt 1y ago[flagged]
- Narishma 1y agohttps://github.com/ClementTsang/bottom https://github.com/ClementTsang/bottom
- web3-is-a-scam 1y agoI’m a btop user how is it gamified? If by “gamified” thy mean “looks like something you would see in a video game (or movie)” then yeah tha tracks but that’s not what “gamified” typically means…
- eqvinox 1y agoI was also incredibly confused how one would gamify a process monitor. Anyone remember psdoom? This is not that, but… honestly I don't think I want a game-menu-UIfied top either. Most games' UI is barely tolerable… (Ed.: looks like it's just poor titling in the HN submission)
- bogwog 1y agoThis makes me want to see an actually gamified process monitor. Maybe it's a game where you gain points by reducing resource consumption
- cbull 1y agoThere was that version of `kill` that you interfaced with by playing Doom...
- bongodongobob 1y agoHere you go! https://www.cs.unm.edu/~dlchao/flake/doom/ https://www.cs.unm.edu/~dlchao/flake/doom/
- michael-online 1y agoHere it is! Using the classic doom https://www.cs.unm.edu/~dlchao/flake/doom/ https://www.cs.unm.edu/~dlchao/flake/doom/
- topato 1y agohaha, triple simultaneous posts.... but that doom kill game isn't really the same as gamifying resource management. I would really want to see a gamified process monitor as well.
- DrPhish 1y ago
- alganet 1y agoWindows Task Manager is already gamified. You find the process you want to kill, then it starts jumping around and you can't click it. You try to find it by typing, but there are 20 other processes with that name that are selected first. So fun.
- 0xK1K3 1y agobtop is my default resources monitor and I really like it, but calling it "gamified"?? you are tracking memory and cpu usage, it doesn't have to be fun
- someguyiguess 1y agoI think it’s fun! (But yeah, it’s not “gamified”. That’s just a clickbait word)
- 0xK1K3 1y agoI mean you're right, profiling is always one of the funniest part to me because it's one of the most creative. You know you have a defined mark to beat and is up to you the strategy you take to achieve that. But it's what you can do with those metrics and knowledge what's fun, not the metrics themselves!
- 3eb7988a1663 1y agoAnyone have strong feelings on htop, btop, bottom, etc? I have used htop forever, but would be happy to hear of a compelling reason to switch.
- someguyiguess 1y agobtop is more colorful and a bit prettier. It has different color themes and it’s easy to open and close different views (network, memory, system processes, storage, etc). Not sure if there’s any real functional advantage though.
- nikisweeting 1y agobtop is good, I like 'glances' the best though because like 'atop' it actually highlights whatever problem is most likely to be causing lag at the moment, and it breaks out docker containers into a separate section and labels them properly. I have a few more listed + notes on them here: https://docs.sweeting.me/s/system-monitoring-tools#All-in-one-tools https://docs.sweeting.me/s/system-monitoring-tools#All-in-on...
- blihp 1y agoI gave up on heavily customizing the UI after a couple of top variants (where I would lose said customizations for a variety of reasons) over the years so I run a fairly vanilla config: I like both the look and the information density of btop over htop out of the box.
- simonmic 11mo agoSome recent notes, somewhat mac-specific: "I'm having trouble finding one true activity monitor on mac. I tried all of these on mac with certain criteria in mind (reliability, renicing, good UX): - Activity Monitor: doesn't update charts when in background, doesn't show nice value, doesn't allow renice, doesn't hide idle processes - Apple's top: non-standard, information overload, no nice/renice/idle/filter - htop: doesn't show accurate process cpu usages (known bug awaiting release), no idle hiding. (Use latest release to avoid crashes.) - btop: hangs (known bug awaiting release), no nice/renice/idle hiding - bottom: basic - gotop: I forget - glances: pretty good, supports nice & renice. That or htop seem to be the only options for that. glances is CPU-heavy. - zenith: also good, faster, and at least shows nice. (Crashes if you sort by it, known bug awaiting fix.)" I went with zenith.
- fn-mote 1y agoIt’s pretty, but I’m a die hard htop fan. Watching and killing processes just doesn’t seem as simple in btop.
- someguyiguess 1y agoI agree but btop does have better visualizations. Htop is better for actually killing processes.
- mixel 1y agoThis is exactly my go to. Monitoring and visualization in Btop and killing the process in htop. It makes it so much easier searching a process with a shortcut instead of navigating the TUI in btop to search
- mixmastamyk 1y agoThis is quite cool, but I do have to nitpick the weird titlebars on the sections. For some reason the top lines bend down to meet the titles and create clutter, in an already cluttered interface.
- clot27 1y agoI prefer [bottom](https://github.com/ClementTsang/bottom https://github.com/ClementTsang/bottom)
- thunderbong 1y agoPage title is - btop: A monitor of resources As per HN guidelines [0] - > Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- vismit2000 1y agoI apologize for incorrect title. Thanks for bringing this in light. This was due to ignorance of guidelines and not disregard for them. Will take care from next time. Can't edit or delete the post now. Requesting dang to edit/delete.
- einpoklum 1y agoI appreciate that people use the new features in C++23, but I don't like that what's supposed to be a very basic system utility relies on compilers not available except in the newest of distributions. I mean, sure, you can also download and build a modern C++ compiler, but I would have swallowed my pride and written it using somewhat older C++. I maintain a GPU-related C++ library which assumes C++11 and no later - even if C++17 constexpr goodness would have made some of it easier to write.
- NelsonMinar 1y ago"Linux binaries for each architecture are statically linked with musl". Love to see this! The binary is 2.6MB and runs great. I don't know if this will replace htop for me. The main feature seems to be 24 bit color and some aggressive styling. I'm too old fashioned for that.
- embedding-shape 1y ago> I don't know if this will replace htop for me I kind of avoided it too, htop, bmon, iotop and nvidia-smi worked fine as it was. But eventually came across it for the Nth time and finally tried it out, it's basically all of them in one, with some nicer graphs and customization. Do I require it to do my job? No, but with it I need 3-4 tmux panes less to see the same info. Also does most of the stuff I used htop for, sorting by different things, filtering by letters and easy to kill the currently selected process.
- seemaze 1y agoIt's slowly growing on me too. Htop is defined in my muscle memory, but more and more of my systems now have btop installed as well..
- zem 1y agothere was a time when we all reached for justplain top by default and it managed to get replaced by htop (:
- ptspts 1y agoIf a text-mode process monitor is larger than about 200 KiB, then it sounds bloated to me. If it's loaded with tons of features, then my upper limit is 1 MiB.
- willis936 1y agoI love btop. It's missing a few things I like from my rainmeter setup. - per physical core clock next to the per core temperature and usage - multiple top subwindows that can each be sorted by different things (it's nice to see who's hogging CPU, memory, and GPU) - more UPS / battery support, namely hooks into power usage
- _gmkt 1y agoDoes it consume more resources than the processes it is monitoring?
- nasretdinov 1y agoSurprisingly, not at all. Seems to be on par with regular top, despite showing much more information
- krautburglar 1y agoToo much voodoo as Terry says. People are so lost and pinned-in—like a free-range prison. Riceing the computer helps take your mind off of it for a bit.
- insane_dreamer 1y agouse btop daily; works great; also works for killing processes (you get bonus points for each killed process :p )
- trevortheblack 1y agoI used to have btop running in a stand-alone terminal, so that I could monitor my system for any weirdness, but I ended up ending the practice as btop leaks memory like crazy: https://github.com/aristocratos/btop/issues/912 https://github.com/aristocratos/btop/issues/912 It wasn't uncommon for gigabytes of ram getting taken up after a day or two of uptime
- woleium 1y agoi have had the current packaged debian version running for a couple of months on a server next to my desk. no memory issues here.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- subset 1y agoI prefer btop over more traditional resource monitor CLI/TUIs as it handles affordances in a more thoughtful and intuitive way (to me, at least - it's definitely a personal preference!). I think it's worth a test drive even just to explore a different sort of interaction mechanism for TUIs. I've written up some thoughts on the design of btop here: https://abstractnonsense.xyz/micro-blog/2025-04-26-btop-of-your-resources/ https://abstractnonsense.xyz/micro-blog/2025-04-26-btop-of-y...