Bg, fg and jobs

bg, fg and jobs are process related commands that belong together. bg stands for background and fg stands for foreground.

Concept

When you start a program under Linux, by default the command runs in the foreground. This means the console is reserved for in- and output to and from this program. You do not get a prompt while the program is running. Here is an example for this showing the program xclock being called by the command

xclock

This program runs in the foreground, the console is reserved for its in- and output. To run the same program in the background, start it with the ampersand ("&") after the program name:

xclock &