How to Use htop on Linux: A Beginner's Guide to Process Management

Installing and Launching htop

• 💻 To use htop on Linux, you first need to install it using a package manager, as it's not installed by default.
• 💡 For Ubuntu or Debian-based systems, you can install it with the command sudo apt install htop.
• 🚀 After installation, htop can be launched either from the terminal by typing htop or by finding its icon in the applications menu.

Understanding the htop Interface

• 📊 The htop interface provides a real-time view of all running processes on your system.
• 📌 Key information displayed includes Process ID (PID), User the process is attached to, CPU usage, Memory usage, and system uptime.
• ⚙️ Additional details like process priority, niceness, and the path of the executable are also visible.

Navigating and Filtering Processes

• 🔍 Use the Search function (F3) to highlight processes containing specific text, or Filter (F4) to display only matching processes.
• 🌳 The View function (F5) allows switching between a list view and a tree view, which can help visualize process relationships.
• 🎛️ Processes can be sorted by various columns (e.g., PID, CPU, Memory) using F6.

Managing Process Niceness and Signals

• ⬆️ Niceness (F7 and F8) adjusts the priority of a process; a higher niceness value means lower priority, and vice versa.
• 💥 To kill a process, use F9. The default signal is SIGTERM (15), which requests a graceful shutdown.
• ⚡ SIGKILL (9) is a more forceful signal that immediately terminates a process, but it's recommended to try SIGTERM first.
• 🚪 You can quit htop by pressing F10 or the Q key.