MySQL Server Administration - Mastering phpMyAdmin 3.1 for Effective MySQL Management - page 286

Server variables
The Variables subpage displays various settings of the MySQL server, which can be
defined in, say, the my.cnf MySQL configuration file. These values can't be changed
from within phpMyAdmin.
Server processes
The Processes subpage is available to superusers and normal users. A normal
user would see only the processes belonging to him/her, whereas a superuser sees
all the processes.
This page lists all active processes on the server. There is a Kill link that allows us to
terminate a specific process.
This example has only one running process—the one created by the SHOW
PROCESSLIST command itself. This process is not killable because it is no longer
running when we get to see the page. We would normally see more processes
running on a server.