Why does htop have three load averages?

Question

On htop, it shows three load averages, one bold, one normal, one red. What do they signify?

Alan Ivey · Accepted Answer · 2014-03-17T14:38:02.083

91

The first one is a 1 minute load average, second is 5 minutes, third is 15 minutes, just like the uptime command. They do not have any special correlation in htop other than to stand out from each other.

This is a good read on understanding what load is: http://blog.scoutapp.com/articles/2009/07/31/understanding-load-averages

edited Mar 17 '14 at 14:38

answered Nov 22 '10 at 14:56

Alan Ivey

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Hey man, hope you're fine:) It was indeed a good read. – Krishna Aug 21 '20 at 12:09
Great article! Just a small thing: on Mac and most Linux distros, you can just use `nproc` to get your number of CPU cores. – Aetherus Apr 28 '21 at 09:43

Why does htop have three load averages?

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