GSmartControl vs stress-ng

GSmartControl is a graphical interface for smartctl, used to inspect drive SMART data and run tests. It displays drive identity, capabilities, attributes and device statistics, and automatically highlights anomalies. Users can enable or disable SMART and adjust global or per-drive smartctl options. Saved smartctl output can be opened as a read-only virtual device. The software supports ATA drives, including SATA and PATA, and NVMe drives, plus some devices behind USB bridges and selected RAID controllers. SCSI and SAS drives are not supported, though some information about them may appear. GSmartControl is free software under the GNU General Public License version 3. Downloads include Linux packages, Windows installers and portable archives, FreeBSD ports, macOS packages and source code. smartmontools is a runtime requirement, but official Windows packages include the required software. Useful operations require root or Administrator privileges because operating systems restrict direct hardware access. Supported systems listed include Linux, Windows, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, DragonFlyBSD, macOS and Solaris; QNX support is described as untested.

stress-ng is a free utility for loading computer subsystems and operating system kernel interfaces with stress tests. Its project lists more than 390 tests, including suites for CPU, virtual memory, filesystems, and memory or CPU caches. CPU tests exercise floating-point, integer, bit-manipulation, and control-flow operations. Listed architecture coverage includes ARM, x86-64, RISC-V, MIPS, Power, SPARC, and s390x. The project originally aimed to reveal hardware problems such as thermal overruns and operating system bugs under heavy load. stress-ng can report test throughput to help observe performance changes between operating system releases or hardware types, but the project says it is not a precise benchmark suite. Some tests may heat poorly designed hardware or create excessive system thrashing that is hard to stop. On Linux, running as root adjusts out-of-memory settings so stressors can become unkillable in low-memory conditions; the README advises careful use. The project documents Docker snapshots and installation on recent Ubuntu releases through its PPA. It is licensed under GPL-2.0 and costs nothing.