List all running processes

The most common way to list processes currently running on your system is to use the command ps (short for process status). This command has a lot of options that come in handy when troubleshooting your system.

Used without any options, the ps command displays only processes that are started from the current shell:

To get information about all processes running on the system, use ps -A:

The most used options with ps are a, u and x. This displays all processes running for all users on your system, along with useful information such as the username of the process′ owner, CPU loads, the starting time of the process, the command that initiated the process, etc.