execve()
replaces the current executable image with another one loaded from an executable file.fork()
creates a child process.vfork()
is a historical optimized version of fork()
, meant to be used when execve()
is called directly after fork()
. It turned out to work well in non-MMU systems (where fork()
cannot work in an efficient manner) and when fork()
ing processes with a huge memory footprint to run some small program (think Java's Runtime.exec()
). POSIX has standardized the posix_spawn()
to replace these latter two more modern uses of vfork()
.posix_spawn()
does the equivalent of a fork()/execve()
, and also allows some fd juggling in between. It's supposed to replace fork()/execve()
, mainly for non-MMU platforms.pthread_create()
creates a new thread.clone()
is a Linux-specific call, which can be used to implement anything from fork()
to pthread_create()
. It gives a lot of control. Inspired on rfork()
.rfork()
is a Plan-9 specific call. It's supposed to be a generic call, allowing several degrees of sharing, between full processes and threads.