Btop: A better modern alternative of htop with a gamified interface

190•vismit2000•3mo ago

Comments

dkdcio•3mo ago

I 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•3mo ago

I'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 :)

nchmy•3mo ago

What about btop is gamified?

leetrout•3mo ago

Poor editorialized title.

reaperducer•3mo ago

Poor 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•3mo ago

taking inspiration from a game doesn’t mean “gamified”.

kgwgk•3mo ago

Just like editing a title doesn't mean "editorialized".

skopje•3mo ago

right? 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•3mo ago

That 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•3mo ago

Hence calling it poorly editorialized.

"Poorly described" would be correct. "Editorialized" does not mean what you think it means. See my previous comment.

benatkin•3mo ago

To 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•3mo ago

Which 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•3mo ago

No 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•3mo ago

Editorialized simply means expressing an opinion (as in an editorial). The word has no connotation implying deceit.

Bjartr•3mo ago

Merriam-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•3mo ago

While 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•2mo ago

The opinion is that the title should be something different than the author wrote for the page.

benatkin•2mo ago

That 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•3mo ago

Apologizing 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•3mo ago

You get 50 points for every process you kill.

oofbey•3mo ago

Haha. Joke, right? Please?

riskable•3mo ago

I just hit 10,000! Honestly, though: The respawn rate is too fast for some of these mobs.

jraph•3mo ago

PsDooM: https://psdoom.sourceforge.net/

Also fsdoom: https://dos.itch.io/fsdoom

gorgoiler•3mo ago

I 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•3mo ago

If you miss the quick time event it SIGKILLs PID1

criemen•3mo ago

> modern alternative

Anyone remember top? I was so happy to switch to htop that had colors!

andrewshadura•3mo ago

And htop is still good enough.

skopje•3mo ago

users: more dots

btop: done

oofbey•3mo ago

I like the idea of having IO integrated. I have trouble remembering the iotop flags and often run it in a parallel window.

baobun•3mo ago

htop shows IO usage too if your version is recent enough. Tab.

oofbey•3mo ago

Ooh thanks!

petepete•3mo ago

Just press z in top for glorious colour.

criemen•3mo ago

Oh wow, I never knew! Guess I never read the manpage either.

bombela•3mo ago

Try B for bold, 1 to expand/collapse CPUs. And finally save the config file with W.

https://xkcd.com/1053/

genewitch•3mo ago

i always press z, x, c, s, 1, <enter> and shift+w to save. I used to color code different servers, but there's only so many combos (like 5) that are easy to read.

zamadatix•3mo ago

Waiting for neobtop++ to output a full GUI system monitor using sixels.

jauntywundrkind•3mo ago

Not 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

EgregiousCube•3mo ago

I 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•3mo ago

Btop really captures that '90s warez group feel.

shevy-java•3mo ago

I 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•3mo ago

And 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•3mo ago

TUI and CLI are not the same thing. TUI is a GUI, and GUIs have never been composable.

jolmg•3mo ago

I think they understand that. They're saying they dislike TUIs and prefer CLIs because CLIs are composable.

somat•3mo 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

foofoo12•3mo ago

Me too. It make it a lot easier to filter out the kids.

forgotpwd16•3mo ago

Lately? Tiling window managers with open terminals running TUI programs have been the focal point in r/unixporn since ever. All looking like poor imitations of Oberon system which actually combined text/graphical interfaces.

bwblabs•3mo ago

I recently found out https://github.com/ClementTsang/bottom#readme (cargo install bottom; executable btm), it's a pretty great improvement over htop I was using before.

risho•3mo ago

i dont think they could have possibly chosen a word to make me want to use it less than gamified.

mouse_•3mo ago

agree

sorokod•3mo ago

Would a mention of loot boxes move you?

tom_•3mo ago

It's not obviously the project's choice itself. See thread here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45857774

forgotpwd16•3mo ago

The 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•3mo ago

GPU at 90°C: New high score!

b112•3mo ago

There was something years ago, Doom, but all the monsters were PIDs. If you wanted a process dead, you shot it.

onraglanroad•3mo ago

psDooM. It's still available https://psdoom.sourceforge.net/download.html

linhns•3mo ago

Title should be a textbook example of language misuse.

bragr•3mo ago

The poster appears to be Indian from their HN profile. How about we extend some grace for a slight misunderstanding of the nuances of a term that isn't particularly common in day to day discussions?

earthnail•3mo ago

I see your point, but I think the anger comes from the fact that

1. the title was unneccessarily editorialized, 2. the word gamified is used wrong here, and 3. There was never any good reason to add the word gamified to the title, other than adding a buzzword.

The feedback people give is probably a bit harsh, but I find it understandable. If you don’t know what a term means, don’t use it - especially not if it’s completely unnecessary as in this case.

vismit2000•3mo ago

Agreed. Shouldn't have used the term without proper understanding as it gives a totally different meaning in hindsight. Sorry for that

vismit2000•3mo ago

Exactly. Apologizing for poor choice of words (English not being my first language). TIL what "gamification" actually means.

zaik•3mo ago

Nowhere on the GitHub page does the project describe itself as "gamified", it's just the title of the HN submission

ashton314•3mo ago

My 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•3mo ago

Does anyone know the difference? I have been using htop since about 20 years.

Is btop basically just extending where it can run?

doublerabbit•3mo ago

Enhanced stats reporting really. Shows you processes, network throughput et cetera.

simlevesque•3mo ago

Lots 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•3mo ago

I switched because btop provides vi-like keybindings. For htop I think you have to use a fork to get that.

petepete•3mo ago

I 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•3mo ago

htop does the same and it is indeed annoying!

flatiron•3mo ago

My htop file is read only. But it’s silly that you need to do that.

synergy20•3mo ago

btop is my default 'top' these days, has everything htop/top provides plus it shows the usage of GPUs.

201984•3mo ago

htop has GPU usage too, it's just not at the top by default.

synergy20•3mo ago

are you sure about that? how? I could not find the magic button to show gpu yet.

201984•3mo ago

Press 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•3mo ago

ubuntu 24.04 had version 1.3.0, not there yet.

embedding-shape•3mo ago

Seems 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•3mo ago

Yeah, 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•3mo ago

You get this for free if you upgrade to Debian 12. It's in the repos.

someguyiguess•3mo ago

It’s free anyway

web3-is-a-scam•3mo ago

I’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•3mo ago

I 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•3mo ago

This makes me want to see an actually gamified process monitor. Maybe it's a game where you gain points by reducing resource consumption

cbull•3mo ago

There was that version of `kill` that you interfaced with by playing Doom...

bongodongobob•3mo ago

Here you go!

https://www.cs.unm.edu/~dlchao/flake/doom/

michael-online•3mo ago

Here it is! Using the classic doom https://www.cs.unm.edu/~dlchao/flake/doom/

topato•3mo ago

haha, 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•3mo ago

It’s not a process monitor, really, but to me the AWS Lightsail monitor tab feels like this. The “sustainable” line hits me right in the OCD to keep me grinding on cpu usage of the workload to keep extra spend at zero.

forgetfulness•3mo ago

I was expecting to see achievements, gambling and speculative markets for loot boxes.

alganet•3mo ago

Windows 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•3mo ago

btop 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•3mo ago

I think it’s fun! (But yeah, it’s not “gamified”. That’s just a clickbait word)

0xK1K3•3mo ago

I 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•3mo ago

Anyone 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•3mo ago

btop 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•3mo ago

btop 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-on...

blihp•3mo ago

I 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•2mo ago

Some 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•3mo ago

It’s pretty, but I’m a die hard htop fan. Watching and killing processes just doesn’t seem as simple in btop.

someguyiguess•3mo ago

I agree but btop does have better visualizations. Htop is better for actually killing processes.

mixel•3mo ago

This 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•3mo ago

This 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•3mo ago

I prefer [bottom](https://github.com/ClementTsang/bottom)

thunderbong•3mo ago

Page 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

vismit2000•3mo ago

I 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•3mo ago

I 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•3mo 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•3mo 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•3mo ago

It'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•3mo ago

there was a time when we all reached for justplain top by default and it managed to get replaced by htop (:

ptspts•3mo ago

If 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•3mo ago

I 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

ufko_org•3mo ago

Does it consume more resources than the processes it is monitoring?

nasretdinov•2mo ago

Surprisingly, not at all. Seems to be on par with regular top, despite showing much more information

krautburglar•3mo ago

Too 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•3mo ago

use btop daily; works great; also works for killing processes (you get bonus points for each killed process :p )

trevortheblack•3mo ago

I 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

It wasn't uncommon for gigabytes of ram getting taken up after a day or two of uptime

woleium•3mo ago

i have had the current packaged debian version running for a couple of months on a server next to my desk. no memory issues here.

subset•3mo ago

I 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-y...

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Btop: A better modern alternative of htop with a gamified interface

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