Don't all rush at once

Ex-Microsoft dev builds a new task manager for Linux

The developer behind the first Windows Task Manager app has vibe-coded a new system monitor app – and it works on macOS and Linux too.

TMOG (Task Manager OG) is the work of David Plummer, who, in the 1990s, developed the original Task Manager tool for Windows.

While it does look like something you’d see running on a screen in background of a cheap sci-fi movie – an aesthetic that years of US TV in the 1990s has programmed me to find cool, I’m sorry to say – it is a real, functional task manage that works across OSes.

To get TMOG from spec to software, Plummer used Claude Code.

He had to feed in a 100+ page document to detail the what, how and why of what he wanted, and took it from there, adding on X, that simply telling Claude Code to write a system monitor would most certainly result in “hot garbage”.

The Linux version of the app uses Qt 6, the macOS version uses Swift/AppKit and the Windows build uses Direct2D on Windows. All sit atop a shared C++ core.

TMOG provides a real-time dashboard of system usage data, including per-process resource usage, power, CPU speed, core status, network connections, disk space – all the stuff you’d expect. It has bright neon vibes, plus a selection of retro “colour themes”.

It also has a smaller, popout mini-mode – with optional retro-inspired skins, including a Winamp one – which you can float over your other windows if you’re really keen to stay on top of what’s happening.

Despite the visual statement it makes, TMOG isn’t here as a gimmick; it’s out to improve system diagnostics.

Many of us only open a system monitor if we notice our system is hiccuping, but that is is often during or after an issue, making it harder to trace quirks back to what caused them (which is why logs are useful).

TMOG includes a “Flight Recorder” feature that enables a user to rewind data to help identify issues when they happened, rather than after-the-fact.

But that feature, along with others, including a CPU benchmarking tool, is only accessible behind a $39.95 “paid Pro tier”.

If you want¹ to try TMOG on Ubuntu, you can: it’s available to download as a Deb installer, an AppImage or an executable binary, with support for both 64-bit Intel/AMD and Aarch/Arm64 devices.

As it is in beta do expect bugs, and while it is free to download and use for live monitoring some features, as mentioned, require a paid plan to access.

(via Engadget)

1. I know some of you reading aren’t keen on whim-sired tchotchke, so I have added a site tag (which needs a better name) that denote AI-assisted projects (at least, those upfront about their AI provenance or whose code shows clear signs of it) . ↩︎