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Is there a software to show software usage in Linux? It should show

  • Last used on
  • How many times a particular software was used
  • "Frequency of usage" graph/GUI would be great!

Some more points:

  • I would prefer if the app shows data about all apps together in a GUI. But even a tabular output in terminal is acceptable.
  • The app is to be used by a single user, so there is no need for the app to show usage by all users together.

A sample output could be like this

__________________________________________________
 APP     | Usage |   Last Used   |   Today's use | 
=========|=======|===============|============== |
Firefox  | HIGH  | Today 11:10pm |   5 times     |
Terminal | HIGH  | Today 10:00pm |   10 times    | 
GNOME Do | LOW   | 25 jan 2014   |    0 times    |
__________________________________________________

EDIT: Though I would prefer a native Linux app, a Windows app which would run through Wine would also be acceptable.

|improve this question
  • Are you speaking of "software usage in general", or on a specific install (i.e. how often which software is used on a specific machine, maybe even per user or for a specific user)? Should it just generate a log, or store statistics in some database? Is a GUI required, and if so, which features should it provide? What format of output is required? Please, edit your question and add some more details. – Izzy♦ Feb 26 '14 at 12:17
  • In general, I would try to make auditd collect the stats for me. – Deer Hunter Feb 27 '14 at 23:21
  • 1
    What do you mean by "usage" I start my Mail Program once every 3 months or so but use it every day. So counting "starts" won't work. So how do you measure "use"? – Angelo Fuchs Mar 8 '14 at 10:21
  • @angeloneuschitzer for my purpose, starts would be enough.but maybe the app could measure the app process' time spend in memory for better results. – Registered User Mar 8 '14 at 12:14
  • A software similar to the one recommended here, but for Linux? – Jens Piegsa Mar 8 '14 at 12:36
3

You can use WhatPulse:

  • Free
  • Linux (and also Win/Mac)
  • It records the total time spent in each program,
  • Stats are available online as well as on the desktop client.
  • Support several computers
  • It records the number of mouse clicks and the keyboard strokes in each program. Since you can select the statistics to be shown for today, yesterday, current week, current month, last three months, last six month, current year, and all time, you can have an approximation of the last time you use the application as well as its usage level.

enter image description here

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  • wow!! that's awesome! – Mina Michael Mar 19 '14 at 18:27
  • Doesn't seem available in distro package repos. Probably because it's closed source trash. – Jan Kyu Peblik Jan 11 '19 at 19:01
4

"Activity Journal" is one good program that might cover some of your requirements but sadly not all. You can find it in the Ubuntu software centre.

Preview

Normally it wouldn't show you your programs' usage, only files, but following this you can install individual plugins for each program you need to know more status about. The plugins are called "Data Providers". (like a chrome plugin for example). and here's all available Data Providers. It'd then track your program usage through the plugin you've installed.

By the way, the third tab (the one to the left of the button that looks like a magnifying glass) shows you a timeline.

...bottomline; very tedious to install (especially that you'd install every plugin individually) and doesn't really hit the spot of what you require but it's a bit close.

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4

Take a look at the venerable "sa" UNIX / Linux sysadmin command: sa. This summarizes the accounting information saved to the "acct" file, and should be able to give you all of the information you require ... and a lot more.

Most modern linux system don't enable "acct" process accounting by default. You should be able to enable it using the accton command.

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