Compare and  contrast top and htop.

Please compare and contrast the top and htop commands in GNU/Linux.

Both the top and htop commands are system monitoring utilities available in GNU/Linux. While they serve a similar purpose of displaying real-time process information and resource usage, there are notable differences between them. Here's a comparison of top and htop:

1. User Interface:

• top: The top command has a more basic and minimalistic interface. It displays information in a simple, text-based format without graphical elements or colors.
• htop: htop offers a more visually appealing and user-friendly interface. It utilizes colors, graphical indicators, and a dynamic display that allows users to interactively navigate and manipulate the information.

2. Customization and Configuration:

• top: top has limited customization options. Users can configure a few settings, such as the update interval and sorting order, using command-line options.
• htop: htop provides more customization options. Users can configure various aspects of the display, such as column layouts, color schemes, and the visibility of different process attributes. Configuration changes can be made interactively within the htop interface.

3. Process Information:

• top: top provides essential process information, such as the process ID (PID), CPU usage, memory usage, and uptime. It also displays system-level information like load averages and overall resource usage.
• htop: htop offers more detailed process information. In addition to the basic information provided by top, htop includes details like command line arguments, environment variables, and the user owning the process. It also displays resource usage in a more intuitive way, with bar graphs and percentage indicators.

4. Interactive Functionality:

• top: While top allows sorting processes based on different criteria and provides limited interactive commands (e.g., sending signals to processes), it doesn't offer extensive interactive capabilities.
• htop: htop is designed to be highly interactive. Users can scroll through the process list, navigate using keyboard shortcuts, sort processes by different columns, search for specific processes, and perform actions like killing or renicing processes directly from the interface.

5. Additional Features:

• htop includes some additional features that are not present in top, such as tree view mode, which displays processes in a hierarchical tree structure, and the ability to monitor multiple systems simultaneously.

6. Availability:

• top is a standard utility available on almost all Linux distributions out of the box.
• htop is not included by default in most distributions but is widely available and can be installed using package managers or compiled from source.

In summary, htop offers an enhanced and more user-friendly experience compared to top. It provides a richer interface, more detailed process information, better interactivity, and increased customization options. However, top remains a lightweight and widely available tool that serves the basic purpose of process monitoring.