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what the hell are "nice" processes??
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Junior Member
Join Date: Mar 2004
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i was looking at my activity monitor, cuz its fun to watch sometimes ya know, and i use it to monitor how much ram i have free.... but i was glancing at the processor usage and noticed this.....
% nice processes? what the heck does that mean, they are nice?? do they tell the processor please and thank you and make it feel all giggly inside??
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Senior User
Join Date: Feb 2002
Location: Denver
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From this page:
A process's priority is determined with a complex formula that includes what the process is doing and how much CPU time the process has already consumed. A special number, called the nice number or simply the nice, biases this calculation: the lower a process's nice number, the higher its priority, and the more likely that it will be run.
On most versions of UNIX, nice numbers are limited from -20 to +20. Most processes have a nice of 0. A process with a nice number of +19 will probably not run until the system is almost completely idle; likewise, a process with a nice number of -19 will probably preempt every other user process on the system.
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Grizzled Veteran
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: case.edu
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And a 'nice process' is one whose nice number is nonzero.
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pb 1440x960 | 1.67, 1.5, 128, 80 | leopard
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Junior Member
Join Date: Mar 2004
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ah, thanks guys! all of this makes more sense now..
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Nov 2001
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FYI, you can get more details about it by reading the man page:
'man nice' from the command line.
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Jun 2000
Location: If I tellz ya, then I gotsta killz ya !
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it also makes more sense if you pronounce it correctly, it's "neese", like geese, not "nice" as in pleasant LOL 
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Signatures are ugly. Bitchy women are ugly......YOU do the math :)
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Mar 2001
Location: England
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Originally Posted by bowwowman
it also makes more sense if you pronounce it correctly, it's "neese", like geese, not "nice" as in pleasant LOL
Are you sure?
I thought it was nice, as in pleasant, because it measures how nice the process will be in giving the other processes CPU time. A higher number == a very nice process, so it doesn't get much done itself.
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What the nerd community most often fail to realize is that all features aren't equal. A well implemented and well integrated feature in a convenient interface is worth way more than the same feature implemented crappy, or accessed through a annoying interface.
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Grizzled Veteran
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: case.edu
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Originally Posted by bowwowman
it also makes more sense if you pronounce it correctly, it's "neese", like geese, not "nice" as in pleasant LOL
It is "nice" as in pleasant. Processes with high nice numbers are 'nice' to other processes.
At first, the nice number was used to make long-term processing jobs get out of the way of interactive progams, by increasing the nice number. Nowadays, the nice number is usually decreased to make a process that needs to run quickly be 'naughty', so the origin of the term 'nice' has become a bit obscured.
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pb 1440x960 | 1.67, 1.5, 128, 80 | leopard
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