A light alternative to gnome-system-monitor?

Question

As I'm programming a little game, I often use gnome-system-monitor to check if there's any memory leak in my program. But the monitor takes too much lime to launch and is pretty slow.

Could you suggest a graphical and light alternative to gnome-system-monitor ?

Answer 1

You can try

• xfce4-taskmanager from Xfce or
• lxtask from LXDE.

Neither of them pull any specific dependencies.

Answer 2

htop

It is a terminal GUI app:

sudo apt-get install htop
htop

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About "real" GUI versions I would suggest for some Conky utilities, but for new OS versions it's often related to specific tuning.

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ProcMeter3

Look for this this system monitor (GUI works with GTK1,2,3):
ProcMeter3

Nice utility which works also with LCD devices :)

_{ProcMeter3 GUI on GTK3}

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Psymon

Also once I tried a Psymon. This is not extremely lightweight software and written
on Qt (not GTK, and therefore should work better with KDE) though despite to this fact it works well not only with Unity and Gnome, but also in other OS, like FreeBSD, MacOS, Windows etc., because it use great python-psutil Debian package. So look it closer:
Nice post about Psymon
Psymon project site

Answer 3

I know you said "graphical", but try running top in a terminal. It's extremely lightweight and gives plenty of information.

Answer 4

I use the System Load Indicator to monitor CPU & memory use, if i notice anything unusual then I can go to gnome-system-monitor or top to find the culprit.

System Load Indicator PPA

Sample image showing current CPU use only.

Answer 5

One tool is gkrellm .

It is very configurable and expandable, and has numerous plugins, skins, etc..

$ apt-cache search gkrellm
gkrellkam - GKrellM plugin that displays a periodically updating image
gkrellm - GNU Krell Monitors
gkrellm-bfm - system load plugin for gkrellm with a duck
gkrellm-gkrellmpc - GKrellM plugin for controlling MPD
gkrellm-hdplop - hard drive activity monitor GKrellM plugin
gkrellm-ibam - Advanced battery monitor for laptops - gkrellm plugin
gkrellm-leds - Keyboard LED monitor for GKrellM
gkrellm-mailwatch - GKrellM plugin to watch mailboxes in multiple panels
gkrellm-mldonkey - mldonkey plugin for gkrellm2
gkrellm-radio - FM radio tuner for GKrellM
gkrellm-reminder - useful reminder plugin for gkrellm
gkrellm-snmp - snmp plug-in for GKrellM
gkrellm-thinkbat - ThinkPad laptops battery status indicator for GKrellM
gkrellm-volume - A mixer plugin for GKrellM
gkrellm-x86info - gkrellm plugin displaying the current processor speed
gkrellm-xkb - Keyboard layout indicator plugin for GKrellM
gkrellmapcupsd - gkrellm plugin displaying the current processor speed
gkrellmd - GNU Krell Monitors Server
gkrellmitime - Internet time plugin for gkrellm
gkrellmoon - Gkrellm Moon Clock Plugin
gkrellmwireless - 802.11 wireless link monitor plugin for GKrellM
gkrellshoot - Plugin for gkrellm to lock the screen and make screenshots
gkrelltop - Top three intensive processes plugin for gkrellm
gkrelltopd - Top three intensive processes plugin for gkrellmd
gkrelluim - GKrellM plugin for uim
gkrellweather - A weather monitor plugin for GKrellM
gkrellxmms2 - GKrellM plugin to control xmms2