I use Ubuntu as a test system, mainly for trying self-hosted apps that may bring my Raspberry Pi Zero to its knees. When you work with self-hosted apps, you tend to monitor their resource usage and fix problematic processes and services. Previously, Ubuntu’s default resource monitor, System Monitor, was my go-to tool. However, it had its fair share of pain points, ranging from a less configurable graph design to limited component graphs and missing service management options.

I looked for an alternative, and Mission Center looked quite appealing with its polished graphs, ability to show GPU usage, a dedicated service management tab, and more control over everything. All of this, condensed into a visually appealing package, made me instantly switch to Mission Center. Let's look at the quirks that make it a better resource monitor tool than the built-in one.

Installation and setup

Flatpak makes it easy

Mission Center is written in Rust; you can download it directly using Flatpak. You’ll find the installation commands on the GitHub page, but you must install and set up Flatpak first and add its repository. Fortunately, you can do so by executing the following three commands:

sudo apt install flatpak
sudo apt install gnome-software-plugin-flatpak
flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://dl.flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo

You can also use the AppImage listed for your system architecture. Mission Center is also available for Arm, but I didn't try it on my Raspberry Pi Zero 2W. Once installed, it'll appear in the app list automatically. Just search for it and launch it from there. If you don’t find it in the app list, restart the system or launch it from the terminal.

Information-rich tabbed design

Detailed graphs

After launching Mission Center, the first thing you'll spot is an uncanny resemblance to a certain resource monitoring tool. Yes, it looks a lot like Windows 11’s Task Manager, especially the graphs section. I won't say that's a bad thing, and you shouldn't hold it against the developer because the design is sensible.

If I compare it with Ubuntu's System Monitor, the Performance section displays many more details here. The left sidebar lists all the system resources: your CPU, GPU, memory, networks, etc. You'll see multiple networks on my PC, but most are virtual networks, including one for Docker. The tabbed view gives you a bigger display area; System Monitor cannot do that. You can view a bigger graph only by minimizing all the other graphs in the default tool.

You can use the Performance section with the sidebar or hide it using the Graph summary view, if you prefer to use the full screen. I also appreciate the ability to control the hardware devices' visibility in the sidebar. It helps in hiding unnecessary network devices listed on my system. You can juggle the device position to keep the most important devices at the top.

Regarding the graphs, the CPU section is much more detailed than you need. After a recent update, you can view split graphs for each CPU core. In System Monitor, you can only see the combined colors in one graph. But you cannot modify the graph colors.

Also, every tab in Mission Center lists the stats on the right side. Be it usage, uptime, cores, device generation, or memory type. The tool doesn't support very old graphics cards, so my Intel HD 3000, a second-generation Intel i3 processor’s integrated GPU, doesn't list all the details.

You'll have mixed results in some areas. For example, my Windows 11 virtual machine lists the virtual disk as NVMe, but Mission Center can't identify it as an NVMe drive. However, I wouldn't blame the tool for this because it is supposed to work correctly on a regular OS, and on my old laptop, it recognizes the old HDD without any issues. It can also recognize fans present on your system.

Another useful feature is that you can copy stats from the graphs. System Monitor doesn’t have a copy option and shows limited details, but offering a choice wouldn’t hurt.

Process and service management

Modifying service states

The Apps tab isn't very different from System Monitor’s processes tab, but it segregates apps from processes. So, you get two neat categories for managing open apps and processes, and don't have to use the search to find one. Sometimes, finding an app's related processes is difficult, but you can now manage those with the Apps section.

Service management isn't available in System Monitor, and it is a huge win for users like me who like to manage all the active services. Doing so from the terminal is exhausting, but I can manage my self-hosted apps or other services from this pane. I can restart any service after modifying the app's state or simply stop it to free up resources when needed. A good example is stopping a few media services that run at startup when I need more resources for some Docker containers.

Moderate resource usage

Doesn't drain too much

System utilities consume much less than any third-party alternative, but that's not the case with Mission Center. When I compared its memory usage with System Monitor, it hovered in the 240-280 MiB range on my virtual machine and in the 140-170 MiB range on my old laptop. It is nearly equal to System Monitor, which means that using it doesn't put any additional load on your system compared to the default one.

I tried it on a virtual machine and on an old laptop, which I had previously revived using Raspberry Pi OS Desktop, and the resource usage was similar. So, you don't have to worry about it being a resource hog.

Granular system monitoring

Mission Center makes granular system monitoring and management much easier than what Ubuntu gives you out of the box. You can restart and manage system services, view rich graphs with a tabbed interface, monitor GPU and fan stats, and view much more information in the app rather than running a terminal command. Once you install Mission Center, you’ll never look back at System Monitor.