That's a great question! While both top and htop serve the same purpose—monitoring system resources and processes—htop is essentially a modern, much more user-friendly version of the classic top.
Here is a comparison of the two:
| Feature | top (The Classic) |
htop (The Modern) |
|---|---|---|
| Visuals | Basic text, usually monochrome (black and white). | Colorful, with easy-to-read progress bars for CPU and RAM. |
| Navigation | Supports vertical scrolling only; hard to navigate long lists. | Supports both vertical and horizontal scrolling using arrow keys. |
| Interaction | Requires memorizing complex keyboard shortcuts to manage processes. | Has a menu at the bottom showing function keys (F1-F10) for common tasks. |
| Process Management | You have to manually type in a Process ID (PID) to "kill" (stop) a program. | You can navigate to a process with arrow keys and kill it directly. |
| Availability | Pre-installed on almost every Linux system by default. | Usually needs to be installed (which is what you just did with apt!). |
| Mouse Support | No. | Yes, it often supports mouse clicks for selecting processes. |
Summary
- Use
topif you are on a very old server where you can't install new software. It's the "old reliable" that is always there. - Use
htopfor your daily work. It provides a much better overview and makes it much faster to understand what is slowing down your computer.
Since you've already installed htop in this step, try running it and compare it to typing top. You'll immediately notice how much easier htop is on the eyes
