Processes

A program is a set of instructions or routines packaged in a particular file format that includes meta-information about the program’s expected run-time environment and other required initialization steps before the program can actually run. When a program is executed, the operating system loads the program into memory and carries out these necessary initialization steps dictated by its runtime expectations. The running instance of a program is called a process.

Processes are fundamental components of operating systems, and they play a crucial role in managing system resources and executing applications. The operating system controls the creation and destruction of processes. It also determines when those processes actually run, allocates and deallocates resources, facilitates communication between processes and so on. Processes have permissions and privileges (slightly different concepts) associated with them, which affects what they can and cannot do on the system.