What are the various ways to kill processes in Linux?

There are several methods to terminate a process in Linux.

1. Using the kill command: The kill command is used to send a signal to a specified process, with the commonly used signal being TERM (15), which requests the process to exit gracefully. For example, to kill the process with the process ID 12345, you can use the command: kill 12345.
2. Using the pkill command: The pkill command can be used to kill a process based on its name. For example, to kill a process called firefox, you can use the command: pkill firefox.
3. The killall command can terminate all processes that match a specific process name. For example, to terminate all processes named firefox, you can use the command: killall firefox.
4. By using the xkill command, you can choose which process to kill through the graphical interface. When you execute the xkill command, the mouse pointer changes to an “X”, and all you need to do is click on the window of the process you want to terminate.
5. Utilize system monitoring tools: System monitoring tools (such as htop, top) can display a list of currently running processes and provide options to terminate processes. Typically, you can kill a specific process by pressing the k key and entering the process ID.

When using the kill command and system monitoring tools to terminate processes, it is important to note that different signals, such as TERM (15) and KILL (9), can be sent to the process. The TERM signal requests the process to exit gracefully, whereas the KILL signal forcefully terminates the process.