On the Linux OS, every process or thread runs through a variety of definite states, and by encoding these, we can form the state machine of a process (or thread) on the Linux OS (do refer to Figure 1 in the following section while reading this).
Since we now understand that the KSE on the Linux OS is a thread and not a process, we shall ignore convention—which uses the word process—and instead use the word thread when describing the entity that cycles through various states of the state machine. (If more comfortable, you could always, in your mind, substitute the word process for thread in the following matter.)
The states that a Linux thread can cycle through are as follows (the ps(1) utility encodes the state ...
