Binary incompatibility of Linux distributions

[Michael M. Moore]

On Fri, 2009-05-22 at 09:15 +0000, marc wrote:
> Steven Susbauer said:
> 
> > On Thu, 21 May 2009 20:28:59 -0500, anthony baldwin
> > <photodharma at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> What I'd be looking for in Arch would be greater ability to completely
> >> customize my system, and not end up with bloat installed that I don't
> >> need...like gnome, kde, or xfce.
> >> Of course, crunchbang is a good option, in that case.
> >>
> >> /tony
> > 
> > This was my original reason for keeping away from Ubuntu, and using
> > Gentoo exclusively. Then I noticed I could remove applications I didn't
> > want installed without much trouble, or just install text only off the
> > DVD and manually put in everything I want. I really think the bloat is a
> > myth.
> 
> I agree with you... almost.
> 
> I run kde, mainly. A few days ago I noticed that when I run nautilus in 
> kde, and then delete the app, it creates a background task, x-nautilus-
> desktop - and leaves it there. This is what I consider bloat. It also 
> happens that this bg task causes enormous slowdowns to kde and some ugly 
> side effects.
> 
> I just hope this is a bug.

That's not a bug, it's a feature.  That's how nautilus works by default.
Nautilus is designed to be the file manager for GNOME, and as such, it
is supposed to provide certain features for the GNOME desktop
environment, one of which is creating the desktop.  That's where those
icons on a typical GNOME desktop come from (though Ubuntu configures the
desktop not to have any icons by default), and that's why when you
'right-click' on a GNOME desktop, you get a menu of items like "Create
Folder," "Create Launcher," etc.

That's also why, if you want to use nautilus under a different set of
circumstances, you have to understand a bit about how it works and what
it does, so that you can modify it to work with whatever you want it to
work with.  You can easily change the appropriate GConf key for nautilus
so that it won't draw the desktop, and use it without problems under
KDE, or XFCE, or with Openbox or other window managers.  It won't
interfere with whatever other desktop settings those come with, *if you
tell it not too.*

You can't complain that something has a "bug" when it is doing exactly
what it was designed to do.

-- 
Michael M.