Limit a set of processes’ CPU and memory usage

Browsing the web has low priority for me, and so I would like all the processes that deal with it to be low priority, too.

Is this approach a valid one?

1. Open a console window with the nice command.
2. Launch the browser from this console.

Will the program launched from this console inherit the niceness of the console itself?

Answer

Will the program launched from this console inherit the niceness of the console itself?

The answer is yes. You can check it nice -n19 xterm. In the console, start someprocess, then check the nice level using ps -efl | grep someprocess. The nice level is inherited.