Intel GPU support has been added to the Linux system monitor app Mission Center.
I’ve written about this GTK4/libadwaita app a few times in the past and, to plagiarise myself, the reaction to it has been off the charts (in a good way). The app is written in Rust and uses OpenGL to render the animation graphs (in an effort to ensure it doesn’t cause a spike in system usage itself).
Though on the resource usages point (as I’ve seen it come up) Mission Center isn’t the only graphical task manager-type app that does use a fair chunk of resources when running, but as it’s not the kind of app you run 24/7, it’s fleeting.
Also, on the topic of things people tend to mention: yes, its visual similarity to the modern Windows Task Manager has not gone unnoticed (but it’s hardly a subtle resemblance, is it). Still, I, like most, don’t care about that: this app looks great and works great which is all that matters.
Using Mission Center you can:
- Monitor CPU usage (overall, or per core)
- Monitor RAM and Swap usage
- See detailed system process info
- See a breakdown how memory is being used by the system
- Monitor storage usage and disk transfer rates
- Monitor network usage and transfer speeds
- See network interface info, including wireless speeds and IP address
- See a breakdown of resource usage by app and process
- Minified summary view for at-a-glance monitoring
- Monitor GPU usage, memory, and power consumption
GPU monitoring for NVIDIA cards is powered by present for a few releases, powered by the NVTOP. But, interestingly, the latest version is able to monitor Intel GPUs as well. This gives Linux users a GUI alternative to the intel_gpu_top package.
However, set your expectations to low: it’s early, initial, basic integration. On my Acer Chromebook (which runs Ubuntu natively) information about the integrated Intel graphics is shown correctly, and the clock speed updates in real-time as the GPU is used, but the graph remains empty.
A GPU memory usage column has also been added to the Apps tab in the latest release, making it easier to see how much GPU resources running apps are consuming.
These and other changes:
- Updated to GTK 4.12 & libadwaita 1.4
- Performance tab is now adaptive
- Initial Intel GPU monitoring
- GPU memory usage column added to Apps page
- Host virtualisation features shows in Performance tab
- Logical CPU graphs re-arranged in a ‘more pleasing manner’
Finally, if you don’t want to install this app as a Flatpak — sacrilege! 😉 — you’ll be pleased to hear you can now download a Mission Center AppImage from the project Gitlab. The addition of an alternative packaging format is undoubtedly going to help the appeal of this (already appealing) tool.
Props 🙌🏻 QwertyChouskie
