Meaning – The term foreground process, refers to the process that must run to completion before another command is issued to the shell. The foreground process is in the foreground process group, which is the group that receives the signals generated by a terminal.
The term foreground process also refers to the command or task you run directly and wait for it to complete. Some foreground processes show some type of user interface that supports ongoing user interaction, whereas others execute a task and “freeze” the computer while it completes that task.
When it comes to the location of a certain process on the computer, the foreground process is the one that is on top of the rest of the processes, and it denoted by the active window.
Example of usage – “The Internet browser window that is displaying a webpage is the topmost window and is considered the active foreground application.”
