This is a re-post that comes directly from GUTL, one of < ° Linux's sister sites. I just found it too fun and informative at the basic level of how Linux and any Unix-based system works... It is, in colloquial Venezuelan language: to piss yourself laughing xD. It says: Those of us who have had the opportunity to know and use operating systems with a Linux kernel know that this is a sordid world, where the bad, demonic and bizarre are presented in the most diabolical and cruel of their expressions. Linux is the most recent mutation of an ancient operating system called UNIX, and it inherited most of its evil genes from it. Worse still, today anyone can find themselves immersed, gratuitously and carelessly, in an absorbing underworld full of strange creatures, evil spells and dark commands. At the center of every Linux server lives a large monolith that everyone calls the kernel. Around it lives a large number of perverse entities, called processes. Nobody seems to know, for sure, what they are for. After 20 years of experience in Linux/Unix, one can get to know some, and even know what others do. However, the vast majority live incognito, acting as they please, obeying the kernel's instructions and sucking the life out of our computer. It is at this point where it becomes disturbing... Many of these processes become daemons. As incredible and supernatural as it may seem, demons do not use spells or spells to reproduce. They use a fork to create other demons called children, who in turn imitate their creator and blindly follow in his footsteps. This hellish purgatory can grow and expand on its own. Linux being a multi-user and multi-tasking operating system, hundreds of these little demons can be created to supply as many naive human victims as they access the system; turning the server into a true hell, plagued by demons, each one with its own life and will. As the number of users decreases, something scary happens. The father demons begin to kill their children, without mercy or compassion. Furthermore, there are terrible commands to kill them all (killall) that are frightening due to the magnitude of the massacre they can cause. For a compassionate death there is a soft kill, and for the most cruel ones there is a hard kill. The infamous total kill command requires no explanation. As you can see, the type of deaths that can occur is abundant. Does what you have read so far sound chilling to you? Wait until you read this: Zombie Process The zombie process has no memory of its own, and wanders around, useless, without being noticed by any of the other active processes in the system. On some occasions, a child process ends or “dies” (die) without its parent or creator finding out. It is said that the child process enters the defunct state or better known as zombie. My God! …Zombies??? …The unfortunate child process, now like a zombie, has no memory of its own, and wanders around, useless, without being noticed by any of the other active processes in the system. Unlike “normal” processes and daemons, the dreaded zombie processes are immune to the kill command. Cruelly, only its father has the power to eliminate it, when instructed with the wait command, and will free it from its penury by removing its ID from the live processes table; finally sending it to the special place where the processes go when their existence ends. If the parent process resists, the system administrator will be forced to kill the parent process, which will also cause the death of all its offspring, normal processes and zombies alike... A truly merciless massacre. On the other hand, there are also orphan processes (orphans), whose father and creator has ended its existence. In this case, the orphan process is adopted by a damned supreme entity, the great demon creator of all demons, called init. From now on, he will be the one who will control the orphans' actions for the rest of their existence. To ensure the unquestionable obedience that init demands, most daemons on a Linux/Unix system have to be orphans! Only then can the evil init have full control of his evil hell. The Satan or Lucifer of this hell, called superuser (su), is the one who, from the most reserved part of a dark console (console), directs the destinies of this ghostly underworld. It is he who, at his fingertips, holds the power to create and manage multiple hells; and seeking to create demons, only to exterminate them later. A whole horror story…. Certainly, the evil imagination of the UNIX developers, at the end of the 60s, brought a demonic veil that, 40 years later, still persists in the operating system and in all its variations. As an example, I point out that FreeBSD, another UNIX-like operating system, adopted an imp as its logo. Those of us who succumb to the attractive evil of this technology are condemned to live under its dark influence, trapped and wandering, without the desire to know or explore other worlds. We live captivated by the attraction of evil. After reading this dark story, I wonder if this is the cause of so much resistance to migration to free software in our country. What do you think? Source:GUTL