Hi all. I'm not sure this it the right forum category, but
here goes.

I notice that there are some processes that automatically
run when my tablet (n810 as it happens) starts. One of
these is:

dnsmasq

Now, I thought dnsmasq was this:

So, why do I need it always running?

Another is:

mediaplayer-engine

Why is this running? Just to speed up media player startup,
or what.

I'd like to figure out what the minimal "services" needed for
the tablet are and how to configure it to run minimal (or
as minimal as possible).

Sorry for the rambling post ...

Not sure, but dnsmasq also caches addresses and address-to-name resolutions, IIRC. It can also make DNS updates automatic on DHCP changes, I'd imagine this might be used on a tablet.

Well, kill the processes and see how long your tablet survives..
That's how I do it on Windows at least, after removing 2/3 of the processes it's still running.. Wonder what the rest is used for..

I feel I should bump this thread to explain things away a little; it seems to have lots of search juice in it.

Linux platforms - or Unix, for that matter - are designed in a very modular way, where a great deal of software (eg: dnsmasq) is in user space as opposed to kernel space. This means that it is listed in the process list, visible to and controllable by you. Windows' architecture, to which most people are accustomed, slams just about everything into the kernel, far away from one's own control. With that design, it is not unusual for every process to be directly associated with a running program.

The result in Linux is that people always see a ton of processes in the process list. Many of those are daemons, which essentially sit there consuming next to nothing until something wants them.
One detail that people often do not expect is that these processes are absolutely tiny to begin with, and the kernel is really good at handling them so that they never get in your way.
Even a well written crawler or search indexer can shrink down to almost nothing, listening for events of interest to it.

In short: Don't worry too much about it unless the processes really are absolutely useless and wasteful. (It is modular for a reason: You can turn them off tidily!).

A question from me: What does mediaplayer-engine do? As someone who uses Canola and MPlayer for most of these things, will that serve a purpose for me?

Could someone post the default processes for a fresh N800 OS2008 to compare what is needed or not. Also if you have an N810, that will be of help as well.