Sometimes things are just cute, y’know?
Like, not everything made for Linux needs to plug an existential hole, break down boundaries, revolutionise computing as we know it™, etc. It’s fine for things to exist just because they’re nice to look at (and hey: if my site’s been a champion of anything these past 13 years, it’s of borderline useless tat to litter our desktops with).
I’m saying all of this upfront — hi, btw 👋 — because I know that the thing I’m spotlighting below is going to leave a few of you reading this scratching your chins in bemusement.
And I want you to know that I get why.
Monitorets: System Monitor, Nothing Else
Monitorets describes itself as “…a small utility application offering a simple and quick view at the usage of several of your computer resources” on its Flathub page — something a glance at the screenshot above will visually confirm.
Using this tool you can see updating usage graphs for:
- CPU
- GPU (experimental, only where supported)
- Memory
- Network downlink traffic
- Network uplink traffic
- Home folder space
- Root space
- Temperature (where supported)
The main window itself is resizable, and when mousing over it you can access the settings icon, a grab handle to reposition the window, and a button to close the app. Distinct horizontal and vertical layouts are available, and the app follows your system’s dark mode preference (there’s a manual in-app override should you want it to differ).
And that’s pretty much all there is to it.
Beyond presenting a live overview of how aspects of your system are functioning, it doesn’t do anything else. It’s just a passive porthole for looking at system resource usage. It won’t help you diagnose runaway processes, find memory hungry apps, or measure your internet speed.
Though it’s an app I prefer to think of Monitorets as a widget, or something more analogous to a super fancy Conky script. I like that it’s discrete and unassuming. I like that it can be made to float on top of all other windows too.
I do wish it was possible to rename temperature sensors as on my Chuwi laptop, none of them are short, and none of them are descriptive. Edit: recent updates allow you to rename all monitors, and enable a value reading.
But for no-frills “what is my CPU load currently like”, Monitorets is pretty… Well, pretty.
Want to try it out? Get Monitorets on Flathub, or fetch the source code from GitHub.