Editing Nice (Unix) (section)

{{Short description|Computer utility for Unix-like operating systems}}
{{Redirect|Renice|the Polish village|Renice, Poland}}
{{refimprove|date=November 2010}}
{{lowercase|title=nice (Unix)}}
{{Infobox software
| name = nice
| logo = 
| screenshot = 
| screenshot size = 
| caption = 
| developer = [[Bell Labs|AT&T Bell Laboratories]]
| released = {{Start date and age|1973|11}}
| latest release version = 
| latest release date = 
| operating system = [[Unix]] and [[Unix-like]]
| platform = [[Cross-platform]]
| genre = [[Command (computing)|Command]]
| license = [[coreutils]]: [[GNU General Public License#Version 3|GNU GPL v3]]
[[4.4BSD]]: [[BSD licenses#4-clause license (original "BSD License")|BSD License]]
| website = 
}}

<code>'''nice'''</code> is a program found on [[Unix]] and [[Unix-like]] [[operating system]]s such as [[Linux]]. It directly maps to a [[Kernel (operating system)|kernel]] [[system call|call]] of the same name. <code>nice</code> is used to invoke a [[List of Unix commands|utility]] or [[shell script]] with a particular [[scheduling (computing)|CPU priority]], thus giving the [[Process (computing)|process]] more or less CPU time than other processes. A niceness of -20 is the lowest niceness, or highest priority. The default niceness for processes is inherited from its parent process and is usually 0.

Systems have diverged on what priority is the lowest. Linux systems document a niceness of 19 as the lowest priority,<ref name="linuxrenice">{{man|1|renice|ManKier}}</ref> BSD systems document 20 as the lowest priority.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://man.netbsd.org/renice.8|title=renice(8) - NetBSD Man Pages |date=October 22, 2020 |website=NetBSD |access-date=April 18, 2023}}</ref> In both cases, the "lowest" priority is documented as running only when nothing else wants to.