procps

Procps is a package of command-line utilities used to monitor and manage processes on Linux and other Unix-like systems. Originating from the procps project, it is commonly distributed today as procps-ng. The tools read information from the /proc filesystem and provide both real-time and snapshot views of running processes, resource usage, and overall system activity.

Key programs in the suite include ps, which reports details about active processes; top, which provides an interactive, real-time view of process activity and resource use; uptime, which shows how long the system has been running and the load averages; free, which summarizes memory usage; vmstat, which reports virtual memory statistics and CPU activity; pidof, which prints the process IDs for a given program name; and the pattern-matching utilities pgrep and pkill, which locate and signal processes by name or other attributes. The suite may also include watch, which runs a command at regular intervals to monitor progress.

Procps utilities interact with the kernel via the /proc filesystem and are typically installed by default on major distributions. They generally require appropriate privileges to view or manage processes owned by other users. The package is released under the GNU General Public License and is maintained by the procps-ng project on modern Linux systems.