Here is a list of all the information presented.
The computer name is presented using large letters. If you maintain several servers, this might help you identify Linuxconf session quickly.
The system profile version is shown. On servers, you do not switch that often between profiles, but this feature is often used on notebook (check it out) and it is always handy to know which profile is active.
A small bitmap is presented. You can select a new one from the feature dialog of the control section of the main menu. This image may help you differentiate your numerous servers.
A text field presents the time elapsed since the last boot.
The load average is presented in 3 text fields. You are getting the average since 5, 10 and 15 minutes. The load average is computed by the kernel. The kernel keeps track of the number of processes ready to run at any given time. In general, most processes on a server or workstation are sleeping, waiting for some event. For example, while you read this help screen, linuxconf is doing nothing. It is waiting for a keyboard or mouse input. So Linuxconf is not in the ready state.
The kernel compute an average. In general, on a workstation, the load average is close to 0 most of the time. A load average of 1 means there is always one process willing to run. A load average of 2 means that most of the time, 2 processes are competing for the CPU. So in general a high load average (for several minutes) means that either your computer is overloaded. Here are some reasons:
This shows how much time the CPU is spending doing nothing. On a workstation, unless you do batched jobs (compiling for one), CPU usage is generally close to 0.
This numbers shows how many users are currently logged in.
A gradation bars show the amount of memory used. The value presented ignore memory used for caching and buffering, since this memory is readily available to applications.
A gradation bar presented the usage of the disk swap area. In general this is be relatively low. If the swap is heavily used, performance will be low and some problems may arise. The load average field above provides some explanations.
A gradation bar presents the amount of files currently opened. By default, Linux allows a maximum of 4096 files opened at once. This limit is configurable in the miscellaneous/kernel configuration dialog. But it won't grow by itself. So if you reach the configured limit, some programs may start to fail.
A gradation bar is presented for every disk partition currently mounted. It shows the disk usage.