Sams Teach Yourself Unix System Administration in 24 Hours

Hour 14 Exploring Processes

We have spent a considerable amount of time talking about how to work with files, the fundamental data element of a Unix system. There’s another facet of Unix that’s just as important to understand, however, and that’s processes. Whether it’s the device driver that’s listening to your keystrokes and relaying the characters to the program you’re running, the X Window System window manager that’s responding to mouse clicks (which are captured and sent along by the mouse device driver), or even the list of files produced by an ls invocation, Unix lives and breathes processes.

Indeed, what’s interesting about Unix is that ...