Bug 440234

Summary: Wish: Aggregations across apps/procs
Product: [Applications] plasma-systemmonitor Reporter: Jan Molnar <jan.molnar>
Component: generalAssignee: KSysGuard Developers <ksysguard-bugs>
Status: RESOLVED INTENTIONAL    
Severity: wishlist CC: ahiemstra, kde, kdedev, plasma-bugs-null
Priority: NOR    
Version First Reported In: 5.22.3   
Target Milestone: ---   
Platform: Kubuntu   
OS: Linux   
Latest Commit: Version Fixed/Implemented In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Jan Molnar 2021-07-24 20:25:37 UTC
SUMMARY
Please enable selection of multiple items (apps/procs...) in System Monitor tables and aggregate the selected items.

STEPS TO REPRODUCE
1. Open System Monitor.
2. Go to "Applications" or "Processes".
3. Select multiple items (this is not available now).
4. Display (on bottom of the table?, on a tooltip?) aggregation (sum) of selected items (e.g. sum of memory and CPU).

MOTIVATION
E.g. when my computer gets overloaded I want to know which app is causing that. So I tend to select some related items to find out I can blame them. This aggregation feature is common in spreadsheet apps (LibreOffice, Google Sheets...).

OBSERVED RESULT
Not implemented yet.

EXPECTED RESULT
Aggregation of selected items displayed.

SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS
Linux/KDE Plasma: Kubuntu 21.04
(available in About System)
KDE Plasma Version: 5.22.3
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.84.0
Qt Version: 5.15.2
Comment 1 David Edmundson 2021-07-24 22:09:48 UTC
Technically multiple selection is possible now (hold control). It doesn't aggregate though.

I'm not sure I understand your usecase.

>E.g. when my computer gets overloaded I want to know which app is causing that. 

That part makes sense.

>So I tend to select some related items to find out I can blame them. 

Like firefox + all the Web Content processes or something? 

If so this is exactly why we have the smartly powered applications view that effectively is doing this and showing aggregated results but automatically so you don't have to.
Comment 2 Jan Molnar 2021-07-25 10:44:43 UTC
>Technically multiple selection is possible now (hold control).
Thank you. Great to know.*

>I'm not sure I understand your usecase.
You are correct, 1) I usually select Firefox or Chrome processes ("Applications" seems to be good), but sometimes 2) I need to select other things as well (e.g. several times this week some parts of KDE went wrong – these are not in "Applications"), 3) or sometimes I want to know in more details / not hidden behind smart magic what is wrong (e.g. which one of "Web Content" processes behaves differently), 4) or sometimes I need to aggregate over multiple apps (e.g. all browsers and local dev server).

"Display as Tree" of "Processes" helps with 2), but does not provide the aggregation, so cannot be used for 1), 3) and 4).

* BTW, shift works exactly the same as control (it does not select range as it does in other tools).
Comment 3 Bug Janitor Service 2021-08-09 04:36:04 UTC
Dear Bug Submitter,

This bug has been in NEEDSINFO status with no change for at least
15 days. Please provide the requested information as soon as
possible and set the bug status as REPORTED. Due to regular bug
tracker maintenance, if the bug is still in NEEDSINFO status with
no change in 30 days the bug will be closed as RESOLVED > WORKSFORME
due to lack of needed information.

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If you have already provided the requested information, please
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Comment 4 Jan Molnar 2022-07-01 12:54:55 UTC
There is another use case: situations no one anticipated / not yet implemented.

Kubuntu 22.04 migrated Firefox from deb to snap and now it is _not_ displayed in Applications, so I have no idea how much it consumes. The issue is primarily elsewhere, Firefox should be displayed in applications, but such not anticipated / not yet implemented things are common.
Comment 5 TraceyC 2025-05-09 22:01:23 UTC
Unfortunately, there haven't been any other users asking for aggregation beyond what's in the Application tab, and this would be fairly complex to implement. I'm going to close this for now.

The issue with snaps not being shown in Applications has a separate report in bug 455070.

For what it's worth, when I suspect something or a few somethings are causing my system to be sluggish, sorting the Application list by CPU and then Memory is usually enough to find the culprits. I sometimes look at 'top` and `btm` on command line as well.

Thanks for your understanding.