What is the purpose of the 'kill' command?

The 'kill' command is designed specifically to terminate a process running in the system. When you use this command, you typically specify the Process ID (PID) of the process that you want to terminate. By default, the 'kill' command sends a signal to the specified process, with the default signal being TERM (terminate), which requests that the process terminate gracefully. If the process does not respond to this signal, other signals can be used with the 'kill' command to force termination, such as the KILL signal, which cannot be ignored by the target process. This makes 'kill' an essential command for managing processes within a Linux environment, allowing users to control and free up system resources effectively.

Other options, such as starting a new process, listing processes, or sending files to another user, are tasks handled by different commands in Linux, like 'nohup' or 'start' for starting processes, 'ps' or 'top' for listing processes, and 'scp' or 'cp' for file transfers, respectively.