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Closing programs
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this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2026
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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.
Does the "SIG" 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.
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.)
It's Secret Intervention Group, but close enough.
Yes.
https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/signal.7.html
I guess, but would have to look that up too (there are quite a lot of signals starting with SIG, so it would make sense that it is this way)
Simple answer for us simple folk. I like it. Thank you!
The worst kind of incorrect!
I think it is showing sigterm correctly. Sigkill wipes you from existence without leaving a body or trace of memory.
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?
Looks like someone got SIGKILL'd