I don’t recall where I first read about btop++. I installed it on an Ubuntu 21.10 Parallels VM as a snap package. When I tried to do the same with Pop!_OS, I couldn’t seem to make snap work, in spite of installing it via apt. So I went looking for its source and found it on GitHub ( https://github.com/aristocratos/btop ). btop++ is written in C++. When I downloaded it and unpacked it, I stepped into its top-level folder and ran make. The build process is quite colorful:

I’m very old-school MS-DOS and I always appreciated the inventiveness of the use of colorized text, and of many attempts to create window-like panels on the screen using the PC character set. Seeing btop++’s make process, as well as btop++ itself, again draws my appreciation.

btop++’s source is very compact, and the build is very quick. The product is a single binary in a bin folder. When completely built you can either copy the binary to /usr/local/bin (using sudo), or you can do what I and so many countless others have done, and copy it to your local home bin directory ($HOME/bin or ~/bin), making sure that your home directory bin is in the path.

btop++ produces quite a bit of information that the author has tried to organize into something readable and useful. Some may find it too visually rich. It’s taken me a few minutes each time I’ve started it up to become reacquainted with everything it displays. Each time I grow more comfortable with it and find I can quickly read the overall state of my little system. And besides, I love all the colorized text, so there’s that.

One feature that bears mentioning is that the application understands mouse clicks. For example, if you clock on the word ‘tree’ above the process list, then a tree view is shown. Clicking ‘tree’ toggles the regular view back.

I believe you should give btop++ a whirl, especially if you’re a big htop user.