📊 Install Latest bottom on Debian

What is bottom?

bottom (the command is btm) is a graphical process and system monitor for the terminal, written in Rust and inspired by gtop, gotop and htop. By default it behaves like a dashboard: CPU, memory, network, disk, temperature and process widgets share one screen, and any of them can be sorted, zoomed or expanded to fill the terminal.

⚡ Key Features of bottom

📦 Installation from deb.griffo.io

sudo install -d -m 0755 /etc/apt/keyrings
curl -fsSL https://deb.griffo.io/EA0F721D231FDD3A0A17B9AC7808B4DD62C41256.asc | sudo gpg --dearmor --yes -o /etc/apt/keyrings/deb.griffo.io.gpg
echo "deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/deb.griffo.io.gpg] https://deb.griffo.io/apt $(lsb_release -sc 2>/dev/null) main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/deb.griffo.io.list > /dev/null
sudo apt update

install -d -m 0755 /etc/apt/keyrings
curl -fsSL https://deb.griffo.io/EA0F721D231FDD3A0A17B9AC7808B4DD62C41256.asc | gpg --dearmor --yes -o /etc/apt/keyrings/deb.griffo.io.gpg
echo "deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/deb.griffo.io.gpg] https://deb.griffo.io/apt $(lsb_release -sc 2>/dev/null) main" | tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/deb.griffo.io.list > /dev/null
apt update

sudo apt install extrepo
sudo extrepo enable griffo
sudo apt update

# Install latest bottom
sudo apt install btm

# Verify installation
btm --version

# Install latest bottom
apt install btm

# Verify installation
btm --version

# Start the dashboard
btm

# A compact, graph-free readout for small terminals and slow links
btm --basic

# Point bottom at a config file. It is created with defaults if missing
mkdir -p ~/.config/bottom
btm --config_location ~/.config/bottom/bottom.toml

# The manual page and bash, zsh and fish completions ship with the package
man btm

🎯 Basic Usage Examples

Everyday monitoring:

# The full dashboard
btm

# Refresh twice a second and keep ten minutes of history
btm --rate 500ms --retention 10m

# Start on the process widget, already expanded
btm --default_widget_type proc --expanded

# Process tree, grouped, showing full command lines
btm --tree --process_command

Inside the dashboard:

# Keys that do the work
#   ?        in-app help with every keybinding
#   e        expand the selected widget to the whole terminal
#   f        freeze the display while you read it
#   +  -  =  zoom a graph in, out, or back to the default
#   /        search the process table
#   c m p n  sort processes by CPU, memory, PID or name
#   dd       stop the selected process
#   t        toggle the process tree

Fitting it to your machine:

# Fahrenheit, no average CPU row, dot markers instead of braille
btm --fahrenheit --hide_avg_cpu --dot_marker

# Count cache and buffers as their own memory line
btm --enable_cache_memory

# Battery widget on a laptop
btm --battery

# A colour theme that matches the rest of your terminal
btm --theme gruvbox

🚀 Why Choose deb.griffo.io?

• ✅ Current Widgets: the newest release, with the widgets, themes and sensor fixes upstream added after the archive froze
• ✅ Drop-in for bottom: the package is named btm after the command and declares Provides/Replaces for bottom, so it slots in where the archive package was
• ✅ Automatic Updates: packages updated within hours of upstream releases
• ✅ Complete Package: the upstream binary plus the btm.1 man page, bash, zsh and fish completions, the desktop entry and its icon
• ✅ Five Architectures: amd64, arm64, armhf, i386 and riscv64, the same monitor on a laptop, a Raspberry Pi and a RISC-V board
• ✅ Multi-Distribution: works on Bookworm, Trixie, Forky and Sid
• ✅ Easy Maintenance: standard apt commands for updates

📦 Package Build Repository

The Debian packages are automatically built and maintained in this GitHub repository:

• 📊 bottom-debian - Latest release builds

🔗 Related Packages

Also available from deb.griffo.io:

• Fastfetch - One-shot system information summary
• lazydocker - Docker containers and images in the same terminal style
• k9s - The same dashboard idea, for Kubernetes clusters
• Zellij - Terminal multiplexer to keep bottom in a pane