Some of the tools come pre-installed with all Linux distros, some may require manual installation.Īll the following methods are demonstrated on Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS. It has various built-in system calls to extract performance readings. In the case of Linux, there are numerous tools to monitor CPU usage. Sometimes, unusual CPU usage may also indicate that there’s a system intrusion.īased on all this information, checking CPU utilization can be quite insightful. If a certain process/app is causing too much CPU usage, it may either be malfunctioning, bugged or that’s the nature of it. However, the system admin may want to keep an eye on it to ensure that someone isn’t hogging all of it, causing overall poor system performance and experience. If multiple users are logged in, then the CPU usage will automatically be high. While all the software is optimized, my way of usage will cause a higher CPU load.

In my case, for example, I play games while there are hundreds of browser tabs open and multiple background tasks running. Even other apps out there are quite optimized. Modern operating systems are optimized to use the CPU as efficiently as possible. To get the most out of it, it’s necessary to manage and optimize its usage. The CPU is the primary source of all the processing power a computer offers. In this guide, check out how to check CPU utilization in Linux. Monitoring the CPU performance can help debugging processes, managing system resources, taking system decisions, and evaluating systems in real-time.

To ensure the most out of the limited processing power, it’s necessary to monitor how this resource is used. The performance of the CPU is one of the major determinants of the performance of a system.

Linux get current cpu usage