How to view your active processes in Terminal.

stapiagutierrez
  13 years ago
  18

If you're coming from Windows you know how sometimes you want to find out quickly what process is taking the most RAM and other useful information.

There is a very simple terminal command you can run in Mint to show you a very comprehensive list!

1. Open up Gnome-Terminal:

Press Alt+F2 and type in gnome-terminal. Your Terminal window should pop up.

2. Inside of the Terminal:

Type in the word top and you should see a nice list of processes and how much ram they are using.

 

That's all there is to it! It's very simple to use and very simple to read. Have fun!

Comments
matthew234 8 years ago

@D3ny

Press H for options and Q to quit


pwoody82 9 years ago

I am running Mint 17 and had a DVD in the drive and selected 'VIdeo' to play it. The window opened, sound started, and the system hung. Alt-f2 had no effect and Alt-ft followed by typed in gnome-terminal also had no effect. I ended up doing an emergency shutdown.


jahid_0903014 10 years ago

nice


noztox 12 years ago

alternative command "ps aux" or "ps aux | grep name_app_running"


grey1960envoy 13 years ago

another simple way to check on things that windoze missed !!!


Jac978 13 years ago

@Inhuman_4 I gave a try to "htop" but I turned back to "top" when it's colors were confusing me... I.. Oh... It's starting again! :)

- Apologize because of this joke. -


inhuman_4 13 years ago

While must people will likely prefer to use a gui. For those of us who like using the command line, or use ssh a lot, I recommend "htop".

htop is an improved version of top. It adds colour coding, percentage bars, and a generally cleaner interface. If you are a trying to check your systems performance in the command line, install htop and give it a try.


vipek 13 years ago

I prefer more user-friendly way:
MintMenu -> All applications -> Administration -> System Monitor


distrohopper 13 years ago

htop is far superior than top if you must use a terminal application for this.


remoulder 13 years ago

Most windows users would rather run a mile than use a terminal. It would be much simpler to direct them to system-monitor, which whilst not as comprehensive is at least a gui. Also your tutorial doesn't explain how to use top to do anything, and how to get out it.