Date: 2008jan11 OS: Linux Level: Beginner Q. Linux: What are the Linux commands to monitor what processes are running? A. You can use:

ps - report a snapshot of the current processes.

pstree - display a tree of processes

top - display updated view of busiest processes

htop - interactive process viewer (uses ncurses)

gtop - Gnome top

bashtop - monitors a bunch of things in fine style

See man pages for more info. The /proc directory has a subdirectory for each running process. So search for numbered directories shows whats running:

ls /proc | egrep '[0-9]'

My favourite way of invoking ps:

ps -eo user,pid,%cpu,start,args --forest