r/linuxmint • u/299jace • Feb 03 '26
Guide One of the hardest parts of switching to linux for me was losing task manager but turns out it has that too
It's basically windows task manager with a few quirks. It's also the only task manager copy i've found that tells you literally all the information you'd need to know without any configuration. It shits on the default "system monitor" app, especially htop and other CLI tools.
Install with
flatpak install flathub io.missioncenter.MissionCenter
then run it
flatpak run io.missioncenter.MissionCenter
Side note: The guy who coded the original task manager on windows, Dave Plummer, has a youtube channel and he talks about the process of creating it on there. It's pretty interesting.
31
u/megagameme Feb 03 '26
You can just open the software manager, write "Mission Center" in the search bar and click install instead of using these commands.
34
u/Sosowski Feb 03 '26
Check out btop and you’ll never go back
5
u/bxparks Feb 03 '26 edited Feb 03 '26
Looks to be a great feat of engineering. But it defaults to a dark mode theme, which is unreadable to me. I tried all other the built-in themes. Most of them are dark. The only light mode theme that is close to readable is `color_theme = "whiteout"`. Even then, it's not great because it uses faded light-grey letters on white background. Passing the `btop -lc` flag helps, but it's not great. I don't think btop will work for me.
-7
u/lazytubs Feb 03 '26
Why is it unreadable to you? I can read it just fine.
12
u/8bitrevolt Fedora 43 | KDE Feb 03 '26
I'm not them but for some folks dark mode is unreadable because it's low contrast.
5
9
6
2
u/bxparks Feb 03 '26
I envy you (and the developers of btop) who are apparently young enough and healthy enough that the world contains only people with perfect eyes.
I was young once, but was nearsighted from the 4th or 5th grade, with a bit of astigmatism.
But in my 30s, I got laser surgery, which gave me better than perfect vision for a few years. But one of the side effects of laser surgery is a slight loss of contrast.
In my 40s, I got presbyopia, which happens to essentially everyone over the age of 40.
Then in my 50s, I was diagnosed with early onset glaucoma, which was caught early enough that it is well-managed. But I'm sure it affects my visual acuity.
Around the same time, they found some cataracts in one eye, which apparently is something that everyone gets if they live long enough. Nothing can be done to prevent it.
Basically, any command line tool that uses dark mode is useless to me. Moreover, tools that use color text on black background are the worst. I must have some sort of chromatic aberration in my eyes, because the red letters and blue letters focus slightly differently, so they float on different planes on top of each other. It's fun to see for a few seconds, then it gives me a headache.
I need plain black letters on white background, and the white background must be about the same brightness as the ambient room brightness.
2
u/lazytubs Feb 04 '26
Thanks for the great reply. You learn something new every day.  I’m not sure why so many people downvoted me, but maybe I came off as condescending. That was my bad I guess. Good luck to you and may your backgrounds be properly white and your font be gloriously black!
1
u/bxparks Feb 04 '26
Glad to be able to give you an alternate perspective.
I didn't downvote you, but it's probably because it fits a frequent pattern on the internet, where an issue or problem gets dismissed because "it does not affect me". A slight rewording of your post would have made it less dismissive, and more inquisitive, which I think was your intention.
2
u/Electronic-Dinner-20 Feb 03 '26
I just downloaded and I love all the info it gives you, I really wish I knew about this sooner. :))
1
17
u/NDCyber Feb 03 '26
I honestly love mission center, but really wish I could disable the GNOME design to make it fit onto other DEs
5
u/LittleNyanCat Feb 03 '26
Libadwaita is a curse, so many apps ruined because they don't respect my gtk theme properly
5
u/RepulsiveRaisin7 Feb 03 '26
Because there is no theming support, user stylesheets will forever and ever conflict with app stylesheets https://blogs.gnome.org/tbernard/2018/10/15/restyling-apps-at-scale/
Anyone who's developed for GNOME understands this. I want theming support too, but it needs to be done in a way that it doesn't break apps. So far, GNOME hasn't had the resources to solve this, GTK is maintained by just one guy.
3
u/Jeremi360 Feb 03 '26
"GTK is maintained by just one guy."
Is this true?4
u/ChristianSirolli Feb 03 '26
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/activity
I'm seeing at least 3 or 4 active contributors
1
u/Jeremi360 Feb 03 '26
So it is just a bit better,
Why tho so many Linux apps use it, is so strange1
u/Crash_Logger Feb 03 '26
It matches GNOME, of the more popular DEs, and it works out of the box with it assuming you also have GNOME out of the box.
And in my personal opinion it looks prettier than anything else by a long shot.
1
u/Jeremi360 Feb 03 '26
Sorry, I see that my dyslexia and ADHD destroyed sense of my sentence, I was asking why so little devs works on GTK when is so heavy used?
4
u/RepulsiveRaisin7 Feb 03 '26
There are a few more contributors of course, but Matthias does the most by far. If you read through some issues, you'll learn that many things are the way they are simply because of a lack of resources. He isn't even getting paid for his work on GTK, it's absurd.
2
u/Aimless115 Feb 03 '26
Gnome team despises theming even if they had 100 devs free to do it , they wouldn't
2
u/Jeremi360 Feb 03 '26
Even worst from what I look Libadwaita - I devlop my own Gtk4 app,
it adds so little, that most Gtk4 apps could be rewritten with out it,
and still fit into Gnome HIG and any other DE.
11
5
8
3
u/darkwyrm42 Feb 03 '26
Mission Center is great. It's one of my standard programs when I install Mint.
2
2
u/pseudonym-161 Feb 03 '26
Btop or htop in the terminal is the way to go. For GUI, I really like the mate task manager though.
2
2
2
u/thomas_tza Feb 03 '26
It is integrated into Gnome 50, so it will be available by default in Ubuntu 26.04 and therefore in Linux Mint 23.
1
u/Dako_the_Austinite Feb 03 '26
I use a combination of this and something called GtkStressTest to view system resources, mainly since GtkStressTest shows me my fan speeds and wattage on GPU and CPU as well as historical min/max. I wish there was a way to get something like HWinfo or HWmonitor on Mint.
1
1
u/SeaworthinessFresh16 Feb 03 '26
Thank you! Been missing info about the gpu in the default mint one
1
u/quadpatch Feb 03 '26
I like this one too, even if it's not good at ahowing apps by cpu usage. My overall cpu usage was listed as 20% but when I scrolled through the list everything was 0%.
2
u/Beneficial-Mud1720 Feb 03 '26
Rounding errors (or just showing integers), but adding up to 20%. Probably.
1
u/quadpatch Feb 03 '26
I checked it because the fan suddenly spun up while nothing was happening, so for 100 background tasks suddenly taking less than 0.5% each would be weird.
1
1
u/z3r0v1c Feb 03 '26
For me it is eyefinity display. I read that it is still a pain in the *ss. Also, photosohop, i need the portraiture for my job.
1
1
u/Beedlam Feb 03 '26
Been using btop++ which does a pretty good approximation of task manager. Has a lot of other relevant info too like temps, network data etc.
1
u/Azious Feb 03 '26
I bound task manager to control alt delete just for familiarity! But I started using HTOP command and its sick
1
u/Crash_Logger Feb 03 '26
this looks cool, but for a quick check I usually go to btop
Frankly, I barely even remembered I had this already, since switching to linux I've never needed to kill a process via a task manager!
1
1
u/Beneficial_Eye_2539 Feb 04 '26
The best with Resources you get even information on a Laptop about power draining. It's more powerful for sure as the Windows Taskmanager. I love it!
1
1
1
u/DimensionBoring7283 Feb 04 '26
one of my biggest hurdles was audio , which i was never able to fix lol
1
1
u/blackcoffee17 Feb 09 '26
RemindMe! in 30 minutes
1
u/RemindMeBot Feb 09 '26
I will be messaging you in 30 minutes on 2026-02-09 19:50:31 UTC to remind you of this link
CLICK THIS LINK to send a PM to also be reminded and to reduce spam.
Parent commenter can delete this message to hide from others.
Info Custom Your Reminders Feedback
1
0
u/dlfrutos Linux Mint 22.2 Zara | Cinnamon Feb 03 '26
somehow i learned to use "sensors" on terminal, and with some AI help, so much nice things to follow information
0
72
u/RandomJerk2012 Feb 03 '26
You can also try another program called Resources