Part 3 · Lesson 15 · Advanced

Scheduling & Context Switch

One CPU, many processes, taking turns.

In this interactive Linux lesson from Stencel Academy you don't just read — you type real commands like ./a & ./b & ./c &, switch and watch the machine respond on a live, animated map. It is part of the free How Linux Works course.

Key takeaway: One core runs one process at a time; the scheduler time-slices and context-switches between them.

Before this lesson

Builds on: The Process Address Space.

What you'll practise

nice -n 10 ./job — Lower a job's priority (be nice to others).
taskset -c 0 ./job — Pin a process to one CPU core.
cat /proc/loadavg — Run-queue pressure over 1/5/15 min.

Terms you'll learn

schedulerrun queuetime slicecontext switchpreemption

Check your understanding

How does one CPU core run many processes at once?

It time-slices and context-switches between them
It truly runs them all simultaneously
Each process gets its own core

Open the interactive lesson →