thread title essentially states my problem

i am in kde and need to know what command or what gui tool will allow me to change the priority of process(es)

for example, when I am compiling something and want to play a game in the meantime, I want to set the compiling processes (there is a whole tree of them) at a low priority so that i can play without the game's becoming jerky

*edit: should have searched the forums first; there is a command called "nice" that will let me change priorities, but since I do not have access to my linux box at this moment, could someone explain how I could solve the situation stated above?

Use nice or renice if the program is already running. Nice can increase or decrease the priority. If you want to give a process higher priority, give it a negative number. If you want to be "nice" to other users, then you add a positive number to lower the priority of your process. I think you have to be root to increase the priority. Regular users can only decrese the priority of their processes. I'm not 100% sure since I haven't use it for ages. So either read the manpage or hopefully somebody can confirm or deny this info.

sweet, thx for the info

just checked the man page and it explains how to work those commands