How to List the Top 10 CPU, Memory and Virtual Memory Processes on Linux

Top CPU‑consuming processes

ps auxw | head -1; ps auxw | sort -rn -k3 | head -10

The first part prints the header line of ps auxw. The second part sorts the output by the third column (CPU % used) in descending order and shows the first ten entries.

Top memory‑consuming processes

ps auxw | head -1; ps auxw | sort -rn -k4 | head -10

Here the fourth column (memory % used) is used for sorting, yielding the ten processes that occupy the most RAM.

Top virtual‑memory‑consuming processes

ps auxw | head -1; ps auxw | sort -rn -k5 | head -10

The fifth column (VSZ – virtual memory size) is sorted to list the processes with the largest virtual memory footprint.

Alternative one‑line sorting commands

ps auxw --sort=rss
ps auxw --sort=%cpu

These commands directly ask ps to sort by resident set size (RSS) or CPU usage without piping to sort.

Important ps field meanings

%MEM : percentage of physical memory used by the process.

MAJFL : major page fault count.

VSZ : virtual memory size of the process (in kilobytes).

RSS : resident set size – the actual physical memory the process is using.

TTY : terminal associated with the process.