GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 547694
Description column for System Monitor
Last modified: 2012-09-27 13:31:51 UTC
Add a 'Description' column to the GNOME System Monitor. GNOME System Monitor lists processes, and the processes can sometimes have cryptic filenames which the user does not understand what the process is for. So I suggest to create an 'Description' column to explain the process. The user sees "gdm", "atd", "cron", "trackerd", "nm-applet", "sh", and get confused because he don't know what it is. He look in the Description column and sees that "gdm" is "GNOME Display Manager", "sh" is "shell", and "nm-applet" is "network-management applet", etc. Because when a user checks the running processes and sees "gvfsd" he have no idea what it is, with this Description column, he can easily see that it is the "GNOME virtual file system daemon". * http://www.mistywindow.com/blog-images/software/windows/task-manager.png * http://attachments.techguy.org/attachments/131192d1209566643/windows-task-manager.png
That's a nice idea but no such description exists. Sure for some of these programs, there are some *.desktop files to find and read, but for system processes, nothing.
Then perhaps is the ELF file format could be extended? It could include metadata such as name of software, description of software, and version of software. Also developer of software, and possibly name of license. * http://www.codinghorror.com/files/code/Aboutbox/exe_file_properties.gif * http://blogs.msdn.com/photos/heaths/images/643382/original.aspx
[Adding missing "QA Contact" entry so system monitor bug report changes can still be watched via the "Users to watch" list on https://bugzilla.gnome.org/userprefs.cgi?tab=email when the assignee is changed to an individual.]
This might be possible by adding an Applications tab, as the .desktop files of applications contain some sort of human-readable name. Marking this as a duplicate of bug 143238. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 143238 ***