The difference between foreground and background work

Question

On Linux, what is the difference between setting a foreground and background work?

Answer 1

In the foreground job, all your input goes to the stdin process (including the SIGINT that is generated when you press CTRL-C ), and so you can still kill the process if it is in the foreground).

In the background job, your input is directed to the shell process instead, which is why you see the shell prompt and you can execute commands.

Answer 2

It is quite simple and is explained here: http://linuxreviews.org/beginner/jobs/