A new version of Linux system monitoring app Mission Center is available for download, adding new hardware stats, first-run setup prompt and bug fixes.
Mission Center 1.2.0 adds a new Battery page in the Performance tab, surfaces per-partition usage details on the Disk page with free and used space and adds a graph to the bottom of the CPU page that can optionally show temperature, power draw or CPU frequency.
If you aren’t on a laptop you may still see a Battery page as it can report battery information for peripherals too (albeit with the usual gotcha that power information must be readable to the system for the app to read and report it – it’s not psychic).
Disk partition (front) and battery history (back) pages in Mission Center 1.2.0
The Memory page now shows compression (zRAM/zswap) stats, while the GPU page lets you switch the middle graph between Encode/Decode activity, power draw, clock speeds or temperature (depending on what your graphics card or its driver surface to Linux).
The ‘shimmer’ on cold start (back) and the Apps view (front)
The graphing backend was overhauled to deliver smoother animations and rendering, and when launching the app on slower systems you may notice a brief “shimmer” of grey placeholder charts before the real ones load in, making it clearer the app isn’t hanging.
Mission Center is a system monitor, and can show detailed information about active processes, services and their relative resource usage. Application detection has been improved to ensure more apps show the right name, icon and so on.
Not all features work out-of-the-box – but it’s easier to make them
For some features, like CPU power draw, process-level network usage and fan readings to work, Mission Center 1.2.0 will prompt you to run a setup script. You can preview the script before it runs. You can say no too, but some features won’t report.
Mission Center improves packages too
Mission Center’s official Snap and AppImage packages were improved in this update. The Snap was upgraded to use the core24 runtime, while the AppImage is now far smaller in size, uses quick-sharun and no longer depends on FUSE to run.
New keyboard shortcuts were added too:
- Hold ctrl to pause UI changes
- Use left/right arrow keys to collapse and expand rows in Apps
- alt + 1/2/3**,** etc to switch pages and f9 toggles the sidebar
As well as new features, plenty of bug fixes made it into Mission Center’s first major update this year. Snafus with CPU temperature reading on the Steam Deck, blurry app icons on HiDPI displays, a SMART dialog that was too wide and phantom CPU usage spikes all resolved.
Other changes of note in Mission Center v1.2.0:
- Swap usage is now per-process swap instead of shared memory in Apps
- Hybrid PSS approximation for per-process memory usage
- Send process signals that require elevation via
pkexec
- Disabling device categories and individual network types
- Connection state now listed in the Network details sidebar
- About System dialog shows more info, supports copy
A solid update for what I think is one of the clearest and slickest Linux system monitors (for those itching to ask, yes: the design of Mission Center was inspired by Windows’ Task Manager).
Ubuntu’s decision to make Resources the default system monitor – it did consider Mission Center – means many may no longer feel as inclined to seek out an alternative way to glean more or less the same set of stats.
Personally, I’ve always loved the look and layout of Mission Center, and with the latest update, the additional information makes it even more indispensable for my needs. I remain a btop fanboy at the command-line, but for GUI needs, this is the GOAT.
Where to get Mission Center 1.2.0
Mission Center is free, open-source software built using Rust and GTK4/libadwaita, with more information on the official website and the Gitlab project page, the latter also where you can download an AppImage.
Alternatively, you can install Mission Center from Flathub or the Snap Store. If you’re on Ubuntu, search for it in the App Center or open your terminal and run:
sudo snap install mission-center
Let me know what you think of this update in the comments!
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