DBus and ConsoleKit

[elixir]

Hey grillers,

What are your opinions on ConsoleKit and DBus?

To my understanding, ConsoleKit is a framework that tracks users and login sessions, but this only applies to these processes in the X server. I have also read that is is used for multiuser systems but I do not have multiple people logging into my laptop frequently. I have noticed 15+ processes of the console-kit-daemon running when I execute it while starting the X server, but cannot figure out what the benefit to it is. A benefit to not having it is faster X server load times, which was never an issue to begin with.

Now DBus... After reading the entire wikipedia article, DBus is a mechanism that allows communication between programs concurrently. I am having a hard time understanding why this is useful, due to that fact that the GNU operating system programs already communicate with one another.

Are there really any advantages to programs? Educate me :D

[dkeg]

No advantages that I know of. Niether exist on my system. I know dunst requires dbus, probably b/c of that communicate b/t programs thing, but there are other solutions that I have found workable. It seems if you're not running a DE or login manager, than console-kit is useless.

remove them both and be happy.

[elixir]

I agree. Thank you for the advice, dkeg. It is much more cozy here now :)

[nova]

ConsoleKit is a redundant resource hog for my taste. I leave it and Dbus off my installs. DBus is also a dependency for network-manager. Like Dkeg stated alternatives are available.

[machinebacon]

pure-WM BBQ releases don't come with either, and they work quite well OOTB, so don't bother if you don't need extras. If you stay in TTY, you definitely won't need them. I don't even remember which CLI programs depend on consolekit. Probably none. dbus, if needed, is started anyway by the application via kernel, now that it's implemented there as kdbus.

[GekkoP]

^ On this note, I am in XFCE and although I have dbus, no trace of ConsoleKit here and everything is working fine.

[machinebacon]

^ Sounds logical, the only optional thing would be policykit for the GUI things that require elevated rights, since xfce4 has its own session manager. Thanks for confirming, I even remember that ck-session had a *negative* impact on the one-click-mounting in Thunar.
IIRC consolekit is used when some kind of session management for multiple users is required, those days some people used lxsession/lxsession-lite in Openbox for this.

So, IMO a short answer to the OP:
- optional: yes
- required: no
- recommended: absolutely not ;)

If a program needs this as dependency, flip a coin (search for an alternative program or eat the frog)

[elixir]

I appreciate the advice from you all. Both have been purged with much more resources free inside the system. I am free :D