During the boot process, the BIOS/UEFI (Basic Input/Output System/Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) is responsible for loading the kernel into memory. The BIOS/UEFI is the firmware that initializes the hardware and starts the boot process. It locates the bootloader, which, in turn, loads the kernel into memory to start the operating system.

ext4 is a commonly used file system in many modern Linux distributions. It supports journaling, which helps in maintaining the integrity of the file system, especially in case of sudden system crashes or power failures. Journaling keeps track of changes before they are committed, making it a reliable choice for Linux.

Development tools, such as compilers and libraries, are commonly found in the /usr/local/bin directory. This directory is used for software that is installed locally and not managed by the system's package manager. It's a common location for development tools.

In the context of VPNs in Linux, the PPTP (Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol) is known for its speed and efficiency but may not be as secure as other options. PPTP has known vulnerabilities, so it's not recommended for highly sensitive or secure communications.

To deny all incoming traffic by default and only allow specific traffic in iptables, one would set the default policy of the INPUT chain to DROP. This means that any incoming traffic that doesn't match an explicit rule will be dropped by default.

QEMU's primary purpose in Linux virtualization is emulation and virtualization. It can emulate various hardware components and architectures, making it a versatile tool for running virtual machines and testing software on different platforms.

The "grub.cfg" file in Linux contains the default boot entry and settings for the bootloader. GRUB (Grand Unified Bootloader) is a commonly used bootloader in Linux systems, and its configuration is stored in this file. It determines which operating system and kernel to boot.

If you want to store the exit status of a command in a variable, you would typically use the $? built-in variable. The $? variable contains the exit status of the last command executed, where 0 usually indicates success, and non-zero values indicate an error or failure.

To check if the number of arguments provided to the script is less than 3, you would use if [ "$#" -lt 3 ]. This tests whether the number of script arguments, represented by $#, is less than 3. Option 2 checks if the number of arguments is exactly 3, and Option 3 checks if it's greater than 3. Option 4 checks if there are no arguments.

The correct option is -p. When using the ssh command, you can specify a different port for the connection using the -p option followed by the port number (e.g., ssh -p 2222 user@hostname). This is useful when an SSH server is configured to listen on a non-default port.