Page ins and page outs - could somebody please explain this to me in idiot fashion?

[VirtualTracy]

Load average is related to the number of processes running and waiting to run.

The load averages differ from CPU percentage in two significant ways:

1) load averages measure the trend in CPU utilization, not only an instantaneous snapshot (as does ...percentage), and

2) load averages include all demand for the CPU not only how much was active at the time of ....measurement.

AFAIK, the three sets of number outputs are the 1-minute, 5-minute and 15-minute average

[spankey]

ok, but whats the explaination of the numbers? is 0.25 - 25% usage and how is this broken down in the 3 groups of numbers? How high do these numbers go?

e.g. 0.24 0.38 0.40, there are 3 clear groups/sections

1=0.24
2=0.34
3=0.40

they must all mean/cover something different, so what are they

thanks,

[bobthedino]

The three load average numbers are explained here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load_(computing)

[artov]

Load averages tell how many processes are there waiting for their turn. The values are for one minute, five minute and fifteen minute averages.
So if the values are

0.2 1.2 12.4

and you have one processor, during last minute there has been 0.2 processes running, i.e 80% of the time the processor has being idle. During the last five minute there has being 1.2 processes running, but since there is only one processor, the 20% of them were waiting for their turn. During the last fifteen minutes there has being 12.4 processes running, i.e for each running process there have being 11.4 waiting. If you have several processors or multi-core processor, load under 1 is common.

If you run command top, you see what the running programs (i.e. processes) are and how much they use processor, time and memory.