While the top utility gives us a basic overview of the processes running on your Linux system, the htop utility goes further, by giving us additional information about the processes and also allow several manipulations.
How to Install htop on Linux
To install htop, sort the list of processes using criteria such as: CPU usage, memory, virtual memory, and others and then, search for a process. Next, kill the process.
Automatic installation from repositories (Most distributions )
The
htop package exist for most of the Linux distributions, thus allowing easy installation via the
package manager!
This is the generic procedure to be used:
- NB: all commands are entered as root (admin), alternatively you can use the sudo program to execute a command as root (Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Lubuntu/Xubuntu).
Installation in Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint and derivatives (Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Xubuntu, LMDE, etc)
The first thing to do, is to verify if your repositories are up-to-date
The next step is to install "htop":
The "
-y" argument above, automatically accepts the package installation!
Fedora, CentOS, RedHat and others
For these distributions, you will notice that htop package is generally missing from official repositories. It is therefore necessary to use the "
EPEL" repositories:
Fedora
CentOS, RHEL, Scientific Linux and other
Installing EPEL repositories:
If the "
epel-release" package does not exist, you will need to install it manually:
RHEL/CentOS 7.X
RHEL/CentOS 6.X
RHEL / CentOS 5.x
Install the htop package:
Gentoo
Simply use
emerge to install the package.
Manual installation from sources
A manual installation from sources may be required when:
- The htop package is not available for your system
- You want to run the latest version of htop and it is not yet available for your system.
Installation and compilation of htop should work on most systems provided you have the right tools!
We'll start by downloading the sources:
Then we will extract this archive:
And now we will compile our tool:
cd htop-1.0.3
./configure; make; make install
Launch htop
Normally, if your installation was successful and has returned an error message, you run htop with the following command:
Useful links
Official website:
https://htop.dev/
Image: © Jaroslav Machacek - Shutterstock.com