Send signals to all process by name
psmisc package on Ubuntu 14.04.
Application: Firefox/Skype hanged. ps -A | grep -i firef, confirm that the name is firefox and that it is the only one with that name, and then:
killall firefox
This sends SIGTERM, which programs may be programmed to handle, so the program may still hang ( and in theory be trying to finish nicely, although in practice this never happens... )
Kill it without mercy:
killall -9 name
This sends SIGINT, which processes cannot handle, so they die.