Four Powerful System Monitoring Tools: htop, iotop, apachetop, and Glances

This article introduces four powerful command‑line monitoring utilities for Linux systems: htop, iotop, apachetop, and Glances.

htop – Interactive Process Viewer htop is an enhanced version of the classic top command, offering a richer overview with a graphical UI, mouse‑clickable columns (CPU%, MEM%, etc.), and extensive help for process management. Install it with sudo apt-get install htop . Screenshot:

iotop – Simple I/O Monitoring Tool iotop provides real‑time I/O statistics per process/thread, similar to top but focused on disk activity. It can be combined with tcpdump to correlate network traffic with I/O usage. Install it with sudo apt-get install iotop . Screenshot:

apachetop – Real‑Time Apache Web Server Statistics apachetop displays live tables of HTTP requests, hits, and request details for an Apache server, giving a quick overview of current web traffic. It is more detailed than similar tools for Nginx. Install it with sudo apt-get install apachetop . Screenshot:

Glances – Comprehensive CLI Monitoring Tool Glances uses the curses library to present a wide range of system metrics (CPU, load, memory, swap, network, disk I/O, mounts, processes) in a compact, interactive interface. It aims to show as much information as possible in minimal space. Install it with sudo apt-get install glances . Screenshot:

These tools together provide a comprehensive set of utilities for monitoring processes, I/O, web server activity, and overall system health on Linux platforms.