Processes run in order of priority: high-priority processes run before low-priority processes. Child processes generally inherit their priority from their parent process.
The priority of a process is set by the nice value of the process, as follows:
A nice value of 0 means that the process has normal priority.
The higher the nice value, the lower the priority.
The lower the nice value, the higher the priority.
For information about how to change the priority of a process, see .
