What ways can be used to determine the current CPU load in the Linux operating system?

In Linux, there are several ways to determine the current CPU load:

• The top command — shows real-time CPU load, memory usage, and process list.
• The htop command — an improved version of top with a user-friendly interface.
• The uptime command — displays the average load over 1, 5, and 15 minutes.
• The mpstat command (from the sysstat package) — shows statistics for each core.
• Reading the /proc/loadavg file — contains the average load values.
• The vmstat command — displays system statistics, including CPU.

Example of using top:

top

Example of reading the average load:

cat /proc/loadavg

The load average shows the average number of processes waiting to be executed, reflecting the CPU load.