This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Phil Bull
philbull@gmail.com 2014
Lots of system processes run automatically in the background.

# Why are there processes listed that I did not start?

There are usually lots of processes listed under the Processes tab. Only a few of these will be programs that you started yourself. The others are mostly processes that are needed by the operating system to make the computer run correctly. These are started automatically when you log in, and typically run quietly in the background.