The ps aux command provides a detailed list of all running processes, including the full command line used to start each process. The a flag tells ps to list the processes of all users, u includes user/owner information, and x includes processes that are not attached to a terminal. The pidof command only retrieves the process ID (PID) of a named process, whereas kill is used to send signals to processes (often to terminate them), and lsof lists open files and the processes that opened them.