Use nice command to run a program with modified scheduling priority / nicenesses. Nicenesses range at least from -20 (resulting in the most favorable scheduling) through 19 (the least favorable). The default behavior is to increase the niceness by 10.

A niceness should not be confused with a scheduling priority, which lets applications determine the order in which threads are scheduled to run. Unlike a priority, a niceness is merely advice to the scheduler, which the scheduler is free to ignore.

nice syntax (/bin/nice command)

#/bin/nice -n NUM

Add integer NUM (-20 to 19) to the niceness.

Change niceness by 3

Type the command as follows:

# /bin/nice -n 3 command-name

Only a privileged user may run a process with lower niceness:

# /bin/nice -n -1 command-name