It is always a good idea to know various tools for monitoring systems from the terminal. Of course, they can not be compared to professional tools like Zabbix, but neither do many users really need them. We’ve already talked about Hegemon. Now it is Gotop’s turn. Using Gotop you can see the resources spent by the system in a very friendly way.
Gotop is another terminal based graphical activity monitor, inspired by gtop and vtop, this time written in Go. With this tool, you can visualize the resources that your system consumes in a very friendly way. It is written in Go with many advantages in execution time. It is quite fast and does not consume almost resources.
Some of its main features are:
- It is available for all Linux distributions. As well as for Mac OS and BSD.
- You can customize the color scheme of the application adapting it to your needs.
- It is open source. The program is released under the GNU Affero General Public License.
- You can monitor CPU, Network, RAM, battery level and processes.
And many more.
So, let using Gotop.
1. Upgrade the system
The first step is to update the system so that it has the best possible performance and you will be able to show more accurate data when running Gotop.
So, in Debian, Ubuntu, and derivates:
:~$ sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade
For CentOS 7 and RHEL:
:~$ sudo yum update
If you are using Fedora 28, 29:
:~$ sudo dnf update
Finally, if you are using OpenSUSE, you can update the system with this command:
:~$ sudo zypper up
Once you have updated the system, you can move on.
2. Installing and using Gotop
Now it is time for installation. To do this, first, you have to download the binaries from the download section of the project website.
At the time of writing this post, the latest stable version of Gotop is 2.0 which introduces new features such as the ability to monitor the battery of a laptop.
So, download it.
:~$ wget -c https://github.com/cjbassi/gotop/releases/download/2.0.0/gotop_2.0.0_linux_amd64.tgz
Of course, if you do not have wget installed, you have to do it.
For Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint and derivates:
:~$ sudo apt install wget
In case, you are using CentOS 7 and RHEL:
:~$ yum install wget
For Fedora 29:
:~$ sudo dnf install wget
Finally, if you are using OpenSUSE:
:~$ sudo zypper in wget
However, wget is a main component of the system. It is likely installed by default.
Next, decompress the file.
:~$ tar -xvzf gotop_2.0.0_linux_amd64.tgz
Now, run it.
:~$ ./gotop
To exit, press CTRL + C.
If you want more options, you can show the help.
:~$ ./gotop --help
So, you can change the color schemes. For example:
:~$ ./gotop --color=monokai
Or, enable the averages.
:~$ ./gotop -a
Conclusion
It is always good to have tools to monitor the state of our system. Now we have another tool that will help us with the task in a simple and friendly.
