htop is a ncurses-based interactive process viewer for Linux created by Hisham Muhammad. It is a must have for tracking how processing power and memory is used on your system.

The textual interface allows users to monitor computer processes which run in the background and kill the ones that are slowing down the computer or eating up all the memory. This is a must have, especially when startx is not running a GUI.

You'll probably want to install ncurses first, so it is probably wise to install tmux first because of the resources you'll need to htop

automake autotool m4 libtool grep

Typically, sudo apt-get install htop will do just fine and it will install the ncurses components if you don't have them.

You could also get htop on Github. The advantage of this is that you can add patches that extend the functionally.

ℹ️ Note: Only add the -j4 argument if you are using a multiprocessor computer such as the Raspberry Pi 2.

$ cd ~/Software
$ git clone https://github.com/hishamhm/htop
$ cd htop
$ ./autogen.sh && ./configure && make -j4 && sudo make install

• http://hisham.hm/htop/
• https://github.com/hishamhm/htop