---
title: "htop"
date: 2023-01-19T10:38:41-05:00
---

htop is an absolutely useless program.

{{< img src="/pix/htop.png" link="/pix/htop.png" class=normal >}}

## What is htop?

htop is theoretically a system-monitor program, but no one uses it for that.

What it actually is is a program that produces a bunch of smart-looking and multicolor lines and shapes with important-seeming process names.

This is the ultimate weapon against impressionable normies if you want to impress them by pretending to be some kind of hacker.

htop is only found (1) in screencaps to show your "set-up" to other losers on the internet and (2) when a normie girl is nearby to hopefully goad her into a conversation you were otherwise too awkward to initiate yourself.

## You wouldn't do it in Windows.

Look at how stupid this image looks.

{{< img src="/pix/windows-htop.jpg" link="/pix/windows-htop.jpg" class=normal >}}

"Oh what, he just pulled up some command prompts, a file browser and a system monitor? Why? Is he actually doing something with those empty prompts? Why does he need a system monitor filling up a third of his screen for this alleged work he's doing?"

All sensible questions that a person naturally asks when he sees the familiar world of Windows.

Yet for newfriends who HECKIN' LOVE GNU/LINUX, for what ever reason, they do the same stuff, take a screencap of it and post it.

This is only possible because even of those people use use GNU/Linux, even in a fancy tiling window manager, so many of them are still struggling to figure things out, so a couple htop windows and a silly file manager open and the brain degrades to a lower, confusion-induced operating level which makes it fawn at the mystery of it.

I mean really---obviously I think tiling window managers are useful, that's what LARBS is about, but when you are *actually working on something* do you *ever* have more than three windows tiled on the same workspace at one time?

Seriously, for most things, I have one thing per workspace unless another prompt is strictly visually necessary. Three or *maybe* four is definitely the maximum.

So it goes without saying that people who pull up seven windows and some pics of anime girls baking pancakes are not doing anything with their computers looking like that.

## Running

Run `htop` by typing it in the terminal.
I even bound it to <kbd>super + shift + r</kbd> just for fun because I wasn't using that key for anything important.
