Understanding processes
In this section, we will show you how processes work in Linux. Now, let's discuss everything about processes. Every program in a Linux system that is currently running is called a process. One single program can consist of multiple processes, and the process can start other processes. For example, as we already know, the Bash shell itself is a command, so, when started, it gets a process. Each command you start in this shell is a new process started by the shell process. So, for example, each time we execute the la -al
command, the Bash shell process creates a new process in which the ls -al
command is running. There are many, processes running all the time on every Linux system. If you have a multiprocessor CPU computer, some of those processes really are physically running in parallel all the time. Other processes, or if you have a single processor CPU, are running only semi-parallel, which means every process only runs for a few milliseconds on the CPU then pauses...