KDE System Guard as a Gnome System Monitor Replacement

As a longtime Windows user, many of my forays into switching to Linux as my daily operating system have had varying levels of success. Apart from all the standard reasons to use Windows like the plethora of software developed exclusively for Windows, and my comfort level with it from using it most of my life, there are the little things. Things like some of the keyboard shortcuts being different from their Windows equivalents (this can be fixed in the settings of most distributions) and the Gnome System Monitor, the included Task Manager-equivalent in distributions like Ubuntu falling short of feature parity with Task Manager. Recently, though, I've discovered that KDE System Guard does a pretty good job of filling the hole in my heart where Task Manager used to be.

Why Not Just Use Gnome System Monitor?

Gnome System Monitor Processes Tab

There are several reasons to just use the built-in Gnome System Monitor on Ubuntu, reasons like "It's built in," and "It has most of the features you need." And while those may both be valid reasons, it's missing a good implementation of a feature I really missed from Task Manager: disk I/O.

Now, if you've dug through Gnome System Monitor a little, you'll know that the feature exists. You can total and current disk reads and writes to the Processes Tab just like you can CPU %, Memory, and a host of other stats on your running programs. The problem I have is that the feature isn't that great. Task Manager has all sorts of graphs that let you track CPU Usage, GPU Usage, Network Usage, Memory Utilization, and the bandwidth of each disk you're using individually over time. In Gnome System Monitor, the only standard available graphs are CPU usage, Memory and Swap usage, and data sent and received over the network. This is where KDE really shines.

The Graphs, the Beautiful Graphs

KDE System Guard Process Table Tab

While KDE doesn't have quite as many options for the Processes tab or its equivalent, the Process Table tab, its graphs are amazingly versatile. When you first open the System Load tab, you're met with the standard three graphs: GPU Usage, Memory and Swap Usage, and Network Send and Receive Data.

KDE System Guard System Load Tab

The real versatility comes when you open a new tab. You'll first be met with an empty area with the words "Drop Sensor Here" and a sensor browser where you can look for different sensors. 

KDE System Guard Default New Tab

It's here that the magic can really start. You can change how many rows and columns of graphs are being shown, you can change the way they are shown, whether is it a digital readout, a bar graph, or a line graph, you can add graphs for all sorts of system metrics, dirty cache, swap usage, RAM usage, activity on various network interfaces like dropped packets,  and throughput, usage of individual disk partitions, reads and writes to various disks and partitions of those disks, load on individual CPUs, hardware sensors like fans, log files, the list goes on and on. I don't even know what most of the various sensors do!

12 Different Graphs Simultaneously

That's what I love most about it. As someone who considers themselves a power user, but not necessarily an expert on all things Linux, to see that there are many possibilities here that I don't understand leads me to believe that even an expert Linux user could get a lot of use out of this user-friendly tool. If that's still not enough for you, you can open multiple instances of KDE System Guard and have multiple custom tabs running on multiple instances. If you're one of those enviable people with a wall of 16 computer monitors at your workstation, it doesn't matter, you can cover all of every screen with charts, graphs, and data about your system up the wazoo! You can even connect it to a remote machine and view what is happening remotely in real-time!

For all these reasons, I'm switching to KDE System Guard to check my system stats from now on. Maybe it doesn't do everything Task Manager does (native GPU usage would really be nice), but it has most of my favorite features and way more that Task Manager doesn't have, like the customizable graphs and remote access.