Task manager

A task manager is a program used to provide information about the processes and programs running on a computer, as well as the general status of the computer. It can also be used to terminate processes and programs, as well as change the processes priority. In some environments, users can access a task manager by pressing the buttons Control-Alt-Delete.

Task managers can display currently running services (processes) as well as those that were stopped. They can display information about the services (such as Process ID and group) if known.

Common task managers

• Windows Task Manager on Microsoft Windows
• Activity Monitor on Mac OS X (known as Process Viewer prior to Mac OS X v10.3)
• ps (Unix)
• top (Unix) utility present in most Unix-like systems and the archetype after which others are modeled.
• tasklist
• htop - available for Linux systems
• GKrellM on BSD, Linux, Solaris and Mac OS X, and Windows
• KDE System Guard and KTop on KDE 3.
• LxTask, the task manager of LXDE. Also used by Puppy Linux.

References

• Savill, John (2008). The Complete Guide to Windows Server 2008. Pearson Education. ISBN 0132797585.