Command Line Quickie: see processes running using 'top'

In Linux, if you need to quickly see what processes are running, you have numerous options. If you prefer the gui (and are using Gnome) you could always run System Monitor. The fastest way however is using the command line.

The 'top' command is part of the procps application installed by default in most desktop linux systems.

It's very useful when you want to quickly check which processes are running in the background. 

Open a terminal (if you're using guake just click f12) and type:

top

That was easy, right?

The command above will continue to refresh unless you stop it (ctrl-c). If you don't want to refresh behavior you can use:

top -n 1

This will tell top to refresh only once.

Learn more about the top command here:
http://www.linuxforums.org/articles/using-top-more-efficiently_89.html