Statistig: Minimalist and well integrated

Statistig (the link goes to GNOME Extensions) is a lean system monitor that shows CPU and RAM usage as small icons in the system status area, right where you also see volume, network, or battery. The display stays discreet and is color-coded: yellow from 70% usage, red from 90%. That way you can see at a glance whether your system is starting to sweat.

The design follows the GNOME guidelines and deliberately skips any graphical ballast. One small downer: Statistig also hooks into the system menu. That wouldn’t be necessary, since settings can easily be changed in the extension manager. It’s not really annoying, but it feels a bit superfluous. The source code is available on GitHub.

TopHat: More data, more overview

TopHat (the link goes to GNOME Extensions) is aimed at everyone who appreciates a bit more control and transparency. Besides CPU and RAM usage, the extension also shows network and disk activity, right in the GNOME top bar, with small animated graphs. It all stays clear and doesn’t clutter the desktop visually.

TopHat is helpful if you regularly want to figure out why the system feels sluggish right now or where the network traffic is going. The graphs are compact but informative, and they give you a lot more context than plain percentages. If you want to dig deeper, TopHat is a good choice. Here, too, the source code is on GitHub.

If you want more: Mission Center

If you prefer a classic app over a Shell extension, take a look at Mission Center. The app was recently released in version 1.0 and is built on GTK4 and Libadwaita, so it looks modern and is functionally comprehensive. You see processes, CPU cores, memory, network, and more, all in one clear window.

Mission Center is best when you want to systematically hunt for bottlenecks or unusual behavior. Unlike the extensions, it needs an open window for that, but it offers more depth in return. If you regularly analyze your system, this is a strong tool.

Which monitor is right for you?

Whether Statistig, TopHat, or Mission Center, all three tools have their place. Statistig is ideal if you prefer a minimalist display and just want to keep an eye on whether the computer is under load. TopHat goes a step further and offers additional insight without disturbing the slim GNOME desktop. And if you’re looking for a full-fledged system monitor as a standalone app, Mission Center is a modern alternative. Looking back: whatever happened to Conky? Do you still have the classic running?

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What is Mission Center?

If you don’t know Mission Center yet: the app lets you monitor various system resources such as CPU, RAM, drives, network, and GPU in real time. It scores with a slick interface built on GTK4 and Libadwaita, which makes it a perfect fit for current GNOME desktops. What I like most is the focus on clarity and performance: all graphs are rendered with hardware acceleration, which keeps the CPU load low.

A few highlights of the basic features:

• Monitoring CPU usage per core or thread
• RAM and swap usage, including memory distribution
• Drive and network activity, including interface information
• GPU usage (via NVTOP), including video encoding/decoding
• Display of running processes and their resource consumption
• A compact summary view for a reduced layout

What’s new in version 1.0?

With the 1.0 release, Mission Center gets more than a nice round version number. It also brings a lot of useful improvements. The most important one: the app has become noticeably more responsive, and it now updates its displays much more precisely in time.

SMART data thanks to UDisks integration

Mission Center 1.0 now uses the widespread UDisks backend to give you detailed information about your hard drives and SSDs. If your drives support SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology), which is standard on current SATA and NVMe devices, you’ll see things like:

• Temperature
• Power-on time
• Error statistics
• and more

You can also eject drives directly, with a helpful error message if something goes wrong. This integration moves the storage view inside the app a big step forward and gives it a bit of added value over other system monitoring tools.

Network usage per process

At last, you can see which process causes how much network traffic. This feature requires nethogs to be installed, though. On Arch Linux, for example, you get it with:

$ <strong>sudo pacman -S nethogs</strong>
$ <strong>sudo setcap cap_net_admin,cap_net_raw,cap_dac_read_search,cap_sys_ptrace+pe $(which nethogs)</strong>
$ <strong>getcap $(which nethogs)</strong>

After that, the Processes view shows a new column for network activity, sortable, of course. In the current version 1.0, the translation for this column is still missing.

GPU monitoring on the Raspberry Pi

Owners of a Raspberry Pi 4 or 5 can look forward to this: the GPU is now detected and monitored via NVTOP, provided the right kernel is installed. That means at least kernel 6.12 with the corresponding support, for example in current Arch or Manjaro builds for the Pi.

Light or dark? You decide!

Not everyone likes the system-wide dark mode, or maybe you want to work in light mode during the day and dark in the evening. Mission Center 1.0 now lets you choose between light and dark mode independently of the system setting.

There’s also a new option to make the graphs “glide” with an animation. It looks pretty, but it comes with a certain performance tradeoff. On weaker systems (Mission Center also runs on a Raspberry Pi, for example) you may be better off disabling it.

Other changes at a glance

• Display of unloaded services on the Services page
• Improved memory reporting
• Display of the maximum bitrate of all network interfaces
• Configurable units: bits vs. bytes, base 2 vs. base 10
• More keyboard shortcuts
• New arrangement of the sidebars for a better overview
• Reworked Apps and Processes page with more information

Installing Mission Center

Mission Center is free software and available for various Linux distributions. The easiest and recommended way to install it is Flatpak via Flathub:

$ <strong>flatpak install flathub io.missioncenter.MissionCenter</strong>

After that, you can open the app from the app launcher or straight from the terminal with:

$ <strong>flatpak run io.missioncenter.MissionCenter</strong>

If you use GNOME Software, for example, you can of course also install the Flatpak on your system with a mouse click. Alternatively, you have these options:

• Snap Store: for users of Snap-based systems like Ubuntu
• AppImage: portable, no installation required

The source code is open and freely available on the project page on GitLab.

A good alternative to System Monitor

Of course, there are plenty of monitoring tools on Linux: htop or glances in the terminal, GNOME System Monitor, or the new Resources, to name just a few. But Mission Center stands out for me with its combination of a modern interface, a sensible range of features, and good performance. The similarity to the Windows Task Manager layout may be divisive, but I think it’s a pragmatic and user-friendly solution. Above all, though, the app is fully open source, actively developed, and fits perfectly into the modern GNOME desktop.

☕ Support Linux und Ich
Thanks for reading Linux und Ich. If you enjoy the blog and would like to support my work, you will find more information on the donation page.