[P1] OS 10.2.3 on iBook

[Mike Beede]

On Tuesday, Jan 28, 2003, at 13:44 US/Central, Small Moose Ltd wrote:

> Hi there,
>
> Could you explain to me what 'load averages' means? I've heard this 
> term
> used quite often with people who use OSX. Is it some kind of 
> diagnostic that
> works out how heavily you tax your computers processor over a given 
> period
> of time?

The load average is the mean number of processes ready to run
when the scheduler selects one.  The kernel keeps moving averages
of the last minute, 5 minutes, and 15 minutes.  These averages
aren't really exact, but they're close enough to see what's going
on.  The place you'll probably see a load average is if you use
the "top" program to view processes.  "man top" will explain it
to you.

Basically, the higher the load average, the more processes your
CPU's time must be divided between.  In itself, it is probably
not a very useful number.  Basically, if the computer is slow,
you (might) fire up "top" and see which processes linger near
the top. Then, if you're irritated enough, you might kill one
or more.

Note: there is a Mac way to see this information too, but "top"
works on a lot of platforms, so that's what I would use.  Perhaps
someone will post the GUI equivalent....

	Mike