htop explained walks through every field in the process viewer

Category: Engineering post
Status: discussion
Sources: htop explained, HN discussion
Summary: A detailed reference (Peteris Krumins, updated 2019-11-17) that annotates every element of the htop and top process-viewer output on Linux: the meters, load average, the difference between virtual, resident, and shared memory columns, the process states, and how the tools read /proc. It resurfaced on the Hacker News front page on 2026-07-04 at 189 points. It is an evergreen explainer rather than a new release.
Why it matters: Reading process and memory columns correctly is a routine operational skill, and the guide clears up common misreadings such as counting shared memory or virtual size as real usage.