Monitor Linux Network Usage And Devices With Nutty

Nutty is a third-party app developed for elementary OS that gives basic information about the network and network-related usage. It has a clean-looking, simple tabbed interface to provide information and stats in various categories.

Main features

Nutty offers several features like devices connected to a network, routes etc

Provides basic and detailed information for the device network card

Provides network data usage in two views – historical usage and current usage

Provides the information on the various hops involved in reaching a URL or IP address from the local device

Provides information on active ports and application using them on the local device

Monitors and provides information on the other devices connected on the network

You can get all this information in the Linux terminal if you know basic networking commands. But having a GUI app often makes things easier.

The best feature of Nutty, I think, is device discovery. I have earlier covered a tutorial to find out devices on the same network in Linux. This feature is very similar to that. You can set a monitoring period in the settings. And after each monitor run, it will send you a desktop notification for every new device on the same network.

In fact, this is the feature I suggested to Siddhartha, the developer of Nutty. And he was kind enough to implement this suggestion into a feature.

Installing Nutty

Officially, Nutty is available for Elementary OS. But as of now, it is only available up to the Elementary OS 5 series from the store.

To install nutty in Ubuntu, there are three methods. From an official PPA, through the Snap app and build from source. Unfortunately, the PPA didn’t work for me, complained about missing install files.

Build it from the source

First, you need to install the necessary dependencies.

Make sure that you have the following packages and development libraries installed including git and curl.

net-tools
nethogs
nmap
traceroute
vnstat
curl
wireless-tools
iproute2
pciutils
git
gettext

libgranite-dev
libnotify-dev
libxml2-dev
libgee-0.8-dev
libgtk-3-dev
libsqlite3-dev
meson
valac

If you want to install all these, use the command:

sudo apt install net-tools nethogs nmap traceroute vnstat curl wireless-tools iproute2 pciutils git gettext libgranite-dev libnotify-dev libxml2-dev libgee-0.8-dev libgtk-3-dev libsqlite3-dev meson valac

Now clone the GitHub repo and install the package with the following commands

git clone https://github.com/babluboy/nutty.git
cd nutty
meson build --prefix=/usr
cd build
ninja
sudo ninja install

You can open Nutty from the overview.

To remove the app, use:

cd ~/nutty/build/
sudo ninja uninstall

Now remove any unwanted package using:

sudo apt autoremove

Install it from PPA

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:bablu-boy/nutty
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install com.github.babluboy.nutty

In case of issues related to the missing libgranite package, add the Elementary PPA as shown below and re-try. The Elementary PPA can be removed after Nutty is installed.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:elementary-os/stable
sudo apt update
sudo apt install com.github.babluboy.nutty

You can remove the elementary repo by:

sudo apt-add-repository --remove ppa:elementary-os/stable
sudo apt update

To remove Nutty,

sudo apt-get remove nutty

Now, remove the PPA from your system:

sudo apt-add-repository --remove ppa:bablu-boy/nutty
sudo apt update

Install it from Snap

sudo snap install nutty

And to remove it, run:

sudo snap remove nutty

If you find any bugs, please report them here.

Small applications like Nutty come in handy and enhance the overall experience of desktop Linux. Don’t you think so?