who is hogging my cpu - some help for Linux users

just tried logging in remotely to an Linux box using VNC and the screen was for the most part frozen. Walked into the other room and logged in directly only to have the same problem. ssh was fine but something really was eating the cpu.

Solution:
sudo apt-get install dstat
dstat -c -y -l --proc-count --top-cpu

this output the following:

----total-cpu-usage---- ---system-- ---load-avg--- proc -most-expensive-
usr sys idl wai hiq siq| int csw | 1m 5m 15m |tota| cpu process
26 3 71 0 0 0|1399 4292 |9.10 12.5 14.1| 313|nvidia-settin0.8
12 14 75 0 0 0| 725 709 |9.10 12.5 14.1| 313|nvidia-settin 13
12 14 75 0 0 0| 736 744 |9.33 12.5 14.1| 313|nvidia-settin 12
11 14 75 0 0 0| 733 721 |9.33 12.5 14.1| 313|nvidia-settin 13
12 14 75 0 0 0| 734 719 |9.33 12.5 14.1| 313|nvidia-settin 12
12 13 75 0 0 0| 730 697 |9.33 12.5 14.1| 313|nvidia-settin 13
11 14 75 0 0 0| 750 716 |9.33 12.5 14.1| 313|nvidia-settin 13
11 14 75 0 0 0| 742 727 |9.15 12.4 14.1| 313|migration/7 13
6 13 81 0 0 0| 760 719 |9.15 12.4 14.1| 313|kworker/4:0 8.2
12 14 75 0 0 0| 719 706 |9.15 12.4 14.1| 313|nvidia-settin 13

as you can see it was nvidia-settings

a ps -ae |grep nvidia-settings gave me a PID that I could: kill PID_of_nvidia_settings

desktop speed back to normal

Not sure how this happened but this tool is certainly worth a look in that I hope it will be helpful to others.