A process is an independent program. For example, if you are using Netscape Navigator, a Netscape process is launched. This notion of process is crucial in UNIX systems. The first process that is launched is "init". One of its tasks is to mount file systems and launch getty on each console (``getty'' is the process which administers the login procedure). The "ps" command enables you to recognize the processes that are being executed by the program which launches them.