Software Alternatives & Reviews

lsof VS Process Explorer

Compare lsof VS Process Explorer and see what are their differences

lsof logo lsof

Lsof lists open files for running UNIX processes. It is a

Process Explorer logo Process Explorer

The top window always shows a list of the currently active processes, including the names of their owning accounts, whereas the information displayed in the bottom window depends on the mode that Process Explorer is in: if it is in handle mode you'l…
  • lsof Landing page
    Landing page //
    2019-09-16
  • Process Explorer Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-21

lsof videos

8 Basic lsof Commands Every Sysadmin Needs to Know

More videos:

  • Review - HakTip - Network monitoring in Linux with lsof

Process Explorer videos

Sysinternals Process Explorer Review + download link and method

More videos:

  • Review - Scan for Malware Using Process Explorer and Virus Total
  • Review - What Is?: Process Explorer?

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to lsof and Process Explorer)
Monitoring Tools
3 3%
97% 97
IDE
100 100%
0% 0
Command Line Tools
2 2%
98% 98
Performance Monitoring
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using lsof and Process Explorer. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Process Explorer seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 287 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

lsof mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of lsof yet. Tracking of lsof recommendations started around Mar 2021.

Process Explorer mentions (287)

  • Hidden dependencies in Linux binaries.
    On windows, this is Dependency Walker versus ProcExp. Similar eye-goggling results. https://www.dependencywalker.com/ https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/process-explorer. - Source: Hacker News / 20 days ago
  • Windows Explorer and Desktop Window Manager high RAM usage
    If you run Process Explorer (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/process-explorer) and enable process tree view, you can see what processes are running under explorer.exe. That should give you a better idea of what's consuming that memory if you're genuinely concerned about this. Source: 5 months ago
  • Roblox doesn't launch for months on PC
    If you have any suspicious processes running onto your computer, close them IMMEDIATELY. I suggest using Process Explorer, as it has a Virustotal which submits all Executables to virustotal under 70+ antiviruses. If any of the processes have 3+ detections, Close them down as anticheats will detect it and stop you from running Roblox. Source: 5 months ago
  • skype is using 20/30% of my CPU all the time even when its on the idle mode.
    If it is the former you can try Process Explorer and set the priority lower (to like 6 or even 4) and see what happens. You can also set the processor affinity with it to limit Skype to only use certain cores. Source: 5 months ago
  • Ways To Check VRAM Usage Per App? Something Is Eating 24Gb VRAM.
    Use process explorer. Download from https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/process-explorer. Source: 10 months ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing lsof and Process Explorer, you can also consider the following products

strace - Trace system calls and signals. A diagnostic, debugging and instructional userspace utility.

htop - htop - an interactive process viewer for Unix. This is htop, an interactive process viewer for Unix systems. It is a text-mode application (for console or X terminals) and requires ncurses. Latest release: htop 2.

Process Monitor - Monitor file system, Registry, process, thread and DLL activity in real-time.

ftrace - A function tracer for the Linux kernel.

Autoruns - See what programs are configured to startup automatically when your system boots and you login.

Sysdig - Sysdig is an open source, system-level exploration that capture system state and activity from a running Linux instance, then save, filter and analyze.