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?

Solution

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

Comments

[Krishna]

Hey man, hope you're fine:) It was indeed a good read.

[Aetherus]

Great article! Just a small thing: on Mac and most Linux distros, you can just use nproc to get your number of CPU cores.