Bottom: A Customizable Real-time Process and System Monitor

Bottom (shortly btm) is a highly customisable, cross-platform graphical real-time process and system monitor designed for use in the terminal. It's inspired by tools like gtop, gotop, and htop. Bottom is an opensource application written in Rust programming language.

In this blog post, we will discuss its features, installation process, and usage.

Table of Contents

• Features of Bottom
• Install Bottom in Linux
  • Install Bottom using Cargo
    • From crates.io
    • From the GitHub repository
  • Installing Bottom using Default Package Managers
• Monitor Linux System Resource Usage Using Bottom
• Help and Key Bindings
• Customizing the Display
• Conclusion

Features of Bottom

Bottom offers a number of useful features for monitoring and managing system resources and processes. Some of its key features include:

• Graphical Visualisation Widgets: Bottom provides visually appealing graphical widgets to track CPU usage, RAM and swap usage, and network I/O usage over time. These widgets support zooming in and out to focus on specific time intervals.
• Informative Widgets: Bottom offers widgets that display real-time information about disk capacity and usage, temperature sensors, and battery usage.
• Advanced Process Management: A dedicated process widget allows users to view, sort, and search for information about running processes. It also supports sending kill signals and viewing processes in a hierarchical tree structure.
• Cross-Platform Compatibility: Bottom runs seamlessly on Linux, macOS, and Windows operating systems.
• Customisability: Bottom offers extensive customisation options through command-line arguments and a configuration file. Users can personalise themes, modify widget behaviour, adjust widget layouts, and filter widget entries.
• Additional Modes: Bottom includes an htop-inspired basic mode and an expansion mode that focuses on a single widget for detailed analysis.

Install Bottom in Linux

Bottom can be installed using various methods depending on the operating system.

Install Bottom using Cargo

For users familiar with the Cargo package manager, Bottom can be installed directly from crates.io or by using the source code from the GitHub repository.

From crates.io

You can install the Bottom crate using cargo install. Please note that you should install Rust programming to use cargo package manager.

# Update to the stable version of Rust.rustup update stable# Install the binary from crates.io.cargo install bottom --locked# If you use another channel by default, you can specify# the channel to use like so:cargo +stable install bottom --locked# --locked may be omitted if you do not want to use the# locked crate versions in Cargo.lock. However, be# aware that this may cause problems with dependencies.cargo install bottom

The --locked flag ensures that the installation uses the locked crate versions specified in the Cargo.lock file. Omitting this flag may lead to dependency issues.

From the GitHub repository

You can also install Bottom directly from the GitHub repository using cargo install. The sources list three options for doing this:

1. Download an archive and install:

# Update to the stable version of Rust.rustup update stable# Install the binary from crates.io.cargo install bottom --locked# If you use another channel by default, you can specify# the channel to use like so:cargo +stable install bottom --locked# --locked may be omitted if you do not want to use the# locked crate versions in Cargo.lock. However, be# aware that this may cause problems with dependencies.cargo install bottom

2. Clone the repository and install:

# Update to the stable version of Rust.
rustup update stable

# Download the archive
curl -LO https://github.com/ClementTsang/bottom/archive/0.10.2.tar.gz

# Extract the archive
tar -xzvf 0.10.2.tar.gz

# Install from the extracted directory
cargo install --path . --locked

3. Install with the repository as the source:

# Update to the stable version of Rust.rustup update stable# Clone the repogit clone https://github.com/ClementTsang/bottom# Navigate to the repo directorycd bottom# Install from the repo directorycargo install --path . --locked

You can also add the RUSTFLAGS="-C target-cpu=native" flag to any of these commands for CPU-specific optimisations:

# Update to the stable version of Rust.rustup update stablecargo install --git https://github.com/ClementTsang/bottom --locked

Remember to replace version numbers and paths with the appropriate values.

Installing Bottom using Default Package Managers

Bottom is available in the official repositories of several Linux distributions, including Arch Linux, Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, CentOS, AlmaLinux, Rocky Linux, Gentoo, Nix, Snap, Solus, and Void. Users of these distributions can install Bottom using their respective package managers.

Arch Linux:

Bottom is available as an official package and can be installed using the following command:

RUSTFLAGS="-C target-cpu=native" cargo install --path . --locked

The latest development version is available as bottom-git from the AUR and can be installed with an AUR helper like paru or yay:

sudo pacman -S bottom

Debian/Ubuntu:

A .deb file is provided for each stable release and nightly build for different architectures (x86, aarch64, and armv7).

You can download and install the appropriate .deb file using the following commands (replace version numbers accordingly):

# Using paru
sudo paru -S bottom-git

# Using yay
sudo yay -S bottom-git

Fedora/CentOS/AlmaLinux/Rocky Linux:

Bottom is available through COPR. Enable the repository and install the package:

# x86-64curl -LO https://github.com/ClementTsang/bottom/releases/download/0.10.2/bottom_0.10.2-1_amd64.deb sudo dpkg -i bottom_0.10.2-1_amd64.deb

You can also download and install the .rpm file from the releases page (replace version number accordingly):

sudo dnf copr enable atim/bottom -y 
sudo dnf install bottom

Gentoo:

Install Bottom from the official Gentoo repository using emerge:

curl -LO https://github.com/ClementTsang/bottom/releases/download/0.10.2/bottom-0.10.2-1.x86_64.rpm 
sudo rpm -i bottom-0.10.2-1.x86_64.rpm

NixOS:

Install Bottom from the nix-community repository:

sudo emerge --ask sys-process/bottom

Snap:

Install the Bottom snap package and connect the necessary interfaces:

nix-env -i bottom

Solus:

Install Bottom using the eopkg package manager:

sudo snap install bottom

# To allow the program to run as intended
sudo snap connect bottom:mount-observe 
sudo snap connect bottom:hardware-observe 
sudo snap connect bottom:system-observe 
sudo snap connect bottom:process-control

Void Linux:

Install Bottom from the void-packages repository:

sudo eopkg it bottom

Remember to adjust the commands according to your specific Linux distribution and version.

Monitor Linux System Resource Usage Using Bottom

Once installed, you can launch Bottom by typing btm in your terminal.

sudo xbps-install bottom

Main Interface:

When you runbtm, you'll see a main interface that displays CPU, memory, disk, and network usage.

The top section shows CPU usage, broken down by cores. The middle section shows memory usage, including RAM and swap, temperature and disk information. And the bottom section shows network I/O and processes information.

• CPU Usage: Shows per-core usage with nice color-coded graphs.
• Memory Usage: Visualizes RAM and swap usage.
• Disk Usage: Displays disk usage and read/write speeds per drive.
• Network Usage: Monitors real-time upload and download speeds.
• Process Monitoring: Lists processes with information on their CPU, memory usage, and more.

Just click on any section to jump into it.

Help and Key Bindings

For a quick overview of command-line flags, use btm -h. For more detailed information, use btm --help. To view key and mouse bindings, press ? inside Bottom.

Press ESC key to close the help window.

You can find more details in the Bottom's documentation.

Customizing the Display

You can further customize btm with a configuration file (bottom.toml) located in ~/.config/bottom/. This lets you change colors, default views, and other settings.

Conclusion

Bottom (btm) is a powerful and versatile terminal-based system monitor packed with many useful features. Its intuitive interface, customisability, and cross-platform compatibility make it an excellent choice for users seeking a comprehensive and visually appealing way to monitor their systems.

Related Read:

• Good Alternatives to top, the Command line Task Manager

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