To see dot files, you must use the -a option to ls. The long form of -a is
-all, if you find that easier to remember. You can also use -A or
-almost-all, which displays all dot files except . and ... Remember that .
is the current directory, and .. is the parent of the current directory;
because these are guaranteed to be in every directory, there is no real
reason to list them with ls. You already know they are there.

Processes

We mentioned before that GNU/Linux is a multitasking system. It can do
many tasks at once. Each of these tasks is called a process. The best way
to get a sense of this is to type top at the shell prompt. You'll get a
list of processes, sorted according to how much of the computer's
processing time they're using. The order will continuously change before
your eyes. At the top of the display, there's some information about the
system: how many users are logged in, how many total processes there are,
how much memory you have and how much you're using.

In the far left column, you'll see the user owning each process. The far
right column shows which command invoked the process. You'll probably
notice that top itself, invoked by you, is near the top of the list
(because anytime top checks on CPU usage, it will be active and using CPU
to do the check).

Note that in all the commands ending in ``d'' - such as kflushd and inetd
- the ``d'' stands for daemon.

Daemon originally meant Disks And Extensions MONitor. A daemon is a
non-interactive process, that is, it's run by the system and users never
have to worry about it. Daemons provide services like Internet