atop vs bottom (btm)

atop is a free, GPL-licensed performance monitor for Linux. It uses a full-screen ASCII interface to report system and process activity at regular intervals. System-level views cover CPU, memory, swap, disk, and network activity. Process and thread views include CPU use, memory growth, disk use, and other statistics, including consumption by processes that finish during the interval. atop can save compressed raw counters for longer-term analysis, preserving daily logs for 28 days by default. The atopsar command turns those logs into system activity reports. It also reports CPU, memory, disk I/O utilization, and pressure for cgroup v2. An optional netatop kernel module adds per-process and per-thread TCP and UDP packet counts and bandwidth statistics. Displays can use bar graphs or detailed text, with columns adjusting to terminal width. Downloads list source and x86_64 RPM packages for version 2.13.0.

bottom is a free graphical system and process monitor that runs in a terminal on Linux, macOS and Windows. It charts CPU use for each core and as an average, along with RAM and swap over time. Network and disk I/O are graphed too, with a control for zooming the displayed time interval. Its process widget lets users display, sort and search process information, use tree mode and send kill signals. Other widgets show disk capacity and use, temperature sensors and battery use. Appearance and behavior can be changed through command-line options or a configuration file, including themes, layout, widget behavior and filtering. An htop-inspired basic mode offers a simpler view, and a selected widget can be expanded to fill the terminal. A read-only option blocks actions that affect the system, such as stopping processes. Installation is documented through package managers, Cargo and pre-built release binaries. Official platform support covers macOS, Linux and Windows; architecture support varies by system. Android and some other systems may work unofficially with limited testing and support.