When comparing Glances vs atop, the Slant community recommends Glances for most people. In the question“What are the best system monitors for UNIX-like systems?” Glances is ranked 2nd while atop is ranked 7th. The most important reason people chose Glances is:
Unlike the default system monitors found in Ubuntu or Gnome Shell, Glances shows a lot of information all in one place instead of having to click through tab after tab. This makes cursory glances at one's stats a lot easier and less time-consuming.
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Important information all in one place
Unlike the default system monitors found in Ubuntu or Gnome Shell, Glances shows a lot of information all in one place instead of having to click through tab after tab. This makes cursory glances at one's stats a lot easier and less time-consuming.
Pro Includes network bandwidth
Pro Works in a terminal
Works perfectly well even if you remote access a server via SSH.
Pro A lot of information
Much more information than htop.
Pro Easily installed
Glances is a popular system monitor and in being so is often found in most distros repositories, so it is easily installed.
Pro Web interface and remote monitoring features
A Web interface based on a Restful JSON API is also available and allows remote monitoring.
Pro Shows only necessary details
Most performance monitors overwhelm you with too much detail. Glances almost always shows exactly what you were interested in immediately.
Pro All in one
Better than top, htop and iotop
Pro Better than htop, top, and iotop
Highlights bottlenecks, so you know what's creating wait states.
Pro Complete and flexibe
Has a ton of possible profiles to show exactly what you need to monitor.
Cons
Con Lack of colors can make it confusing.
Con High cpu usage (on RPi), broken after a few hours of running
It's based on Python.
