What's Linus?
this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2026
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Lol as we've discussed before, inaccurate but funny.
From what I've heard about Windows, it works more like the Simpson's Barney coming up behind Moe meme.
So, as it should be.
While the meme is very funny, it is technically incorrect. Linux has two major ways of terminating a process. When Linux wants a process to terminate execution (for whatever reason) it first sends the SIGTERM signal to the process, which basically "asks" the process to terminate itself. This has the advantage, that the process gets the chance to save its state in a way, that the execution can continue at another time. If the process however ignores the SIGTERM signal at some point Linux will instead forcefully terminate the execution using the SIGKILL signal. This represents what the image shows.
Before someone gets mat at me: I know, that there are like 50 more Signals relevant to this, but wanted to keep it simple.
Simple answer for us simple folk. I like it. Thank you!
I think it is showing sigterm correctly. Sigkill wipes you from existence without leaving a body or trace of memory.
Does the "SIG" stands for "Signal"?
Special Interest Group. An internal committee convenes to decide the fate of the process.
(I don't know the answer, but I'm pretty sure it stands for signal.)
I like to secretly imagine it stands for SIG SAUER. Bang = process ded
Eh, it works more than 80% of the time.
The problem with Sig is they work too oftem, particularly when you don't want them to
80% of the time it works every time!
You're likely bumping into processes which are blocked by IO or are zombies.
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Stop spreading this lie. Linux has a more graceful shutdown process than Windows ever did. It doesn't abruptly kill everything.
Windows has something called the ShutdownBlockReasonCreate API which enables apps with long running operations to prevent a shutdown to avoid corruption or losing work.
Is there an equivalent for Linux? When used appropriately, it makes shut downs even more graceful.
Android/iOS users: What is “closing“? What is a „program“?
May use an iPhone but definitely use a Linux desktop.
Android folks generally know because we have to close them sometimes. Don't know about iPhoners
Windows:
- program refuses to shutdown
- system: okay, guess you don't need your computer to turn off anyway
Such grace.
There is a windows registry hack to set the shutdown wait time for 1s and that did fix it for me. But every update they turn it back to unlimited.
(I ended up installing Linux, I only have the dnf5daemon server holding the shutdown up for atnost 5min now. But I haven't tried to fix it)
Which is why in my Windows days I got a habit of turning computer off with Windows + R --> shutdown -s -f -t 0
Windows just works, my ass :)
Windows task manager:
Let's play a whack a mole game where the app you're trying to kill constantly moves up and down a list by default! Enjoy!
There's a non-obvious freeze function in the Task Manager - for as long as you hold the Ctrl key, it'll stop updating the list. I have no idea why this functionality is hidden, but I guess Dave Plummer had some unusual ideas about UX.
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Graceful like closing a laptop and putting it in a backpack only to have windows refuse to shutdown and become a heater until it cooks the battery and ruins the screen....
To be honest, Mint is no better in that regard on my laptop. Closing my laptop and pulling the power adapter always results in the system not going to sleep mode, but remaining active. Opening it will actually cause it to resume going to sleep. Really annoying.
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I mean, also look at how windows installs programs. Its like a 100 step process taking several minutes, because just putting the files where they need to be is just too simple.
Or the uninstall program, cant just remove the files, no... Need to run full installer backwards to remove all the registry entries and even reboot the system to get rid of it all.
"apt install " is just so much nicer than running some weird installer.
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Ironically it's actually the opposite. Linux has signals, and with the exception of SIGKILL and I think SIGABRT they can all be handled gracefully. Windows on the other hand doesn't have signals, it can only TerminateProcess() which is forceful. The illusion of graceful termination on windows is done by sending a Window close message to all of the windows belonging to a given process, however in the event the process has no windows, only forceful termination is available due to the lack of a real mechanism to gracefully terminate processes. That's why the taskkill command tells you a process requires forceful termination when you run it against something headless.
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