Let Xt be a linear process defined by Xt = [sum ]k=0∞ ψkεt−k, where {ψk, k ≥ 0} is a sequence of real numbers and {εk, k = 0,±1,±2,...} is a sequence of random variables. Two basic results, on the invariance principle of the partial sum process of the Xt converging to a standard Wiener process on [0,1], are presented in this paper. In the first result, we assume that the innovations εk are independent and identically distributed random variables but do not restrict [sum ]k=0∞ |ψk| < ∞. We note that, for the partial sum process of the Xt converging to a standard Wiener process, the condition [sum ]k=0∞ |ψk| < ∞ or stronger conditions are commonly used in previous research. The second result is for the situation where the innovations εk form a martingale difference sequence. For this result, the commonly used assumption of equal variance of the innovations εk is weakened. We apply these general results to unit root testing. It turns out that the limit distributions of the Dickey–Fuller test statistic and Kwiatkowski, Phillips, Schmidt, and Shin (KPSS) test statistic still hold for the more general models under very weak conditions.