Ubuntu - Processes - top

The *top utility tells the user about all the running processes on the Linux machine.

top

returns:

top - 19:03:57 up 22:39,  1 user,  load average: 0.49, 0.68, 0.71
Tasks: 514 total,   2 running, 367 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
%Cpu(s):  1.6 us,  0.3 sy,  0.0 ni, 98.0 id,  0.0 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
KiB Mem : 65980936 total, 21156596 free,  9382376 used, 35441964 buff/cache
KiB Swap:   999420 total,   990972 free,     8448 used. 55163492 avail Mem 
 
  PID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES    SHR S  %CPU %MEM     TIME+ COMMAND     
 3492 peter     20   0 3850948 927040 261616 S  26.8  1.4  26:22.96 Web Content 
 6724 peter     20   0 5545444 402640  99356 S   4.6  0.6  70:02.94 gnome-shell 
 6274 peter     20   0 3902648 932180 284928 S   3.6  1.4  29:49.76 Web Content 
 3291 peter     20   0 4836552 766488 220340 R   3.3  1.2  82:02.60 firefox     
 9683 peter     20   0  103436  62756   4028 S   2.3  0.1  41:40.82 transmissi+ 
12246 root      20   0   16924   5200   4556 S   2.0  0.0  55:45.68 openvpn    
...

Field	Description	Comments
PID	The process ID of each task
User	The username of task owner
PR	Priority Can be 20(highest) or -20(lowest)
NI	The nice value of a task
VIRT	Virtual memory used (kb)
RES	Physical memory used (kb)
SHR	Shared memory used (kb)
S	Status	There are five types: 'D' = uninterruptible sleep 'R' = running 'S' = sleeping 'T' = traced or stopped 'Z' = zombie
%CPU	% of CPU time
%MEM	Physical memory used
TIME+	Total CPU time
Command	Command name