Bpytop - An Efficient Resource Monitor in Linux

For terminal lovers, having the ability to monitor your system resource usage is just as crucial. Being aware of your systems' resource utilization helps you make informed decisions in general system maintenance.  There are a few options out there such as top and htop, but these only display a few system metrics such as CPU and memory usage. Bpytop is an efficient and visually appealing terminal-based resource monitor with a game inspired theme that displays various system resources. Bpytop is the python version of bashtop.

In this guide, we dive deep and explore Bpytop - An efficient resource monitor in Linux.

Features of Bpytop

Before we take a deeper look t the nifty resource monitor, let's have an overview at some of the features that the command-line tool offers:

1. A beautiful and responsive User interface with UP and DOWN arrow keys navigation.
2. Ability to change configuration options within the UI.
3. Integrated mouse support with clickable buttons and scrollable menus.
4. The ability to filter running processes.
5. Display of current read and write speeds for disk drives.
6. Ability to send SIGKILL, SIGTERM and SIGINT to running processes.
7. An intuitive autoscaling graph for displaying network usage statistics.
8. A pop-up message in the menu when a new version is available.

Prerequisites for installation

Before you get started with installing Bpytop, ensure that your system meeting the following requirements:

1)  Python3 (Version 3.6 and later)

2) Psutil module. You can install this module using the command:

$ python3 -m pip install psutil

With the requirements in check, let's now dive in and install bpytop.

Installation of Bpytop

There are two ways that you can install Bpytop: Installation from source and installation from system repositories using a package manager. Let's look at each of these installation avenues:

Manual installation ( Installation from source)

To install from source, first clone the repository from GitHub

$ git clone https://github.com/aristocratos/bpytop.git

To compile from source, navigate into the cloned directory

$ cd bpytop

And run the command below.

$ sudo make install

Interestingly, there's no output printed on the screen as shown.

Installation in various Linux distributions

Apart from compiling from source, you can install Bpytop as follows:

1) Ubuntu - Using snaps

Bpytop is available in snap store and you can install it using the command:

$ sudo snap install bpytop

2) CentOS 8 , RHEL 8 & Fedora

For CentOS 8 & RHEL 8 including Fedora, ensure that you have EPEL installed. Next, run the command below.

$ sudo dnf install bpytop

3) FreeBSD

For FreeBSD, execute:

$ sudo pkg install bpytop

Launching Bpytop

To launch byptop, simply run the command below on terminal:

$ bpytop

You should get the UI shown with your system's resource statistics being displayed.

To get help on command usage and keyboard shortcuts, press the ESC key and scroll down and select the  HELP option.

You will get a list of keyboard shortcuts as shown below.

To exit or quit bpytop resource monitor, simply press 'q' on the keyboard.  Configuration options that can be changed from the UI are found at the  $HOME/.config/bpytop directory.

I hope you enjoyed using this tool, please provide your feedback and suggestions in the below comment section.