Why is idle machine reported as 1.0 load average?

[Robin Laing]

B Wooster wrote:
> Using uptime, w, and top - I noticed that the current load average is
> listed as 1.0 - never falls below 1.0 - even though there is nothing
> going on on the machine, and top reports 99.8%+ idle time...
> 
> My recollection (and doing some web searches) show that 0.0 was the
> load average with nothing going on in the system.
> 
>>From the man pages, I learn that uptime gets its numbers from "w",
> which has been completely rewritten.
> It does not mention anything about starting at 1.0 instead of 0.0 -
> anyone has any info on why idle is now showing up as 1.0 load average?
> Example top output:
> top - 15:08:11 up 13 days, 18:06,  7 users,  load average: 1.00, 1.01, 1.01
> Tasks: 228 total,   1 running, 227 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
> Cpu(s):  0.3% us,  0.3% sy,  0.0% ni, 99.3% id,  0.0% wa,  0.0% hi,  0.0% si
> 
> uname: 2.6.10-1.741_FC3 #1 Thu Jan 13 16:38:22 EST 2005 i686 athlon
> i386 GNU/Linux
> 

How much memory?

You have 228 tasks listed?
What are they?
Are things swapping?
What are the top processes listed in top?

 From an FC1 machine with Boinc (Seti at home running).  Listening to 
XMMS and many mozilla windows open.

13:23:55  up 34 days,  4:17,  2 users,  load average: 1.03, 1.13, 1.16
82 processes: 80 sleeping, 2 running, 0 zombie, 0 stopped
CPU states:  cpu   user  nice  system   irq  softirq  iowait    idle
            total   0.9%  97.6%  1.3%   0.0%     0.0%    0.0%    0.0%

Seti at home is the largest proces.  Xmms doesn't even show up.
-- 
Robin Laing