Q. Why do so many processes owned by me have PPID=1?

[wtautz]

Hi, Just wondering if someone could explain the mechanism of gnome desktop
with respect to processes.

In particular gnome-terminal has PPID=1

If I launch apps from gnome-panel this seems to be the case by default. I assume this is by design?
Just trying to get more insights into how things work and also because some user processes sometimes
take up resources suddenly and it's not immediately clear whether processes with PPID=1 have
been left behind or are "legitimate". 


Below I launched firefox from the shell prompt and this is reflected below....


gnome-terminal(7048)-+-bash(726)-+-firefox-bin(16007)-+-{firefox-bin}(16009)
                     |           |                    |-{firefox-bin}(16010)
                     |           |                    |-{firefox-bin}(16012)
                     |           |                    |-{firefox-bin}(16030)
                     |           |                    |-{firefox-bin}(16031)
                     |           |                    `-{firefox-bin}(16345)
                     |           `-pstree(17519)
                     |-bash(4101)
                     |-bash(13436)---ssh(32453)
                     |-bash(17917)---ssh(28193)
                     |-gnome-pty-helpe(7051)
                     `-{gnome-terminal}(7053)

gnome-vfs-daemo(6103)

gnome-volume-ma(6097)

kded(7786)

kdeinit(7776)-+-kio_file(9617)
              |-klauncher(7784)
              `-konqueror(9763)

kio_uiserver(9447)

knotify(7827)

konversation(7746)

mapping-daemon(6119)

mixer_applet2(6263)