Instead of htop: btop

Why btop is better

• Disks and network get their own panels. btop shows IO activity and speeds per disk and an auto-scaling network graph, which htop does not cover the same way.
• Full mouse support makes every highlighted button clickable, and the process list scrolls with the wheel.
• A menu inside the program changes every config option, so there is no file to edit.
• GPU monitoring is available on Linux, including utilisation, power use and clock speed for supported cards.
• It keeps htop's core features, including the process tree, filtering, sorting and sending any signal to a process.

When to keep htop

Keep htop on servers and minimal systems. It is in nearly every distribution's default repositories, uses less screen space and fewer resources, runs on Linux, the BSDs, macOS and Solaris, and is what other admins will expect to find.

Switching

Install btop from your package manager and run it. There is nothing to migrate. Learn the number keys that toggle panels and press the menu key to adjust settings. Use a terminal with true colour and a font with braille or block characters for the graphs.

Watch out

GPU support is not in the release binaries because it needs dynamic linking, so you may have to compile it. btop needs a reasonably modern terminal and font to draw properly. It is maintained mainly by one developer.

Also worth a look

• bottom A cross-platform graphical process and system monitor written in Rust; pick it if you want btop's kind of view with Windows support.

More newer, better command-line tools

• grep →, use ripgrep
• find →, use fd
• cat →, use bat
• ls →, use eza
• cd →, use zoxide
• du →, use dust
• diff →, use delta
• sed →, use sd
• curl →, use xh
• Make →, use just
• man pages →, use tldr pages