I believe that Nautilus serves to manage aspects of the Gnome desktop.
I did just
ps -A | grep nautilus on this here CentOS box where I'm using Gnome and, even though I do not have the Nautilus file manager running, here is the output:
Code:
[(username)@orca ~]$ ps -A | grep nautilus
3552 ? 00:00:05 nautilus
Also, in Fluxbox, I have Nautilus on the menu set to start as follows:
Code:
nautilus --no-desktop --browser
option.
Without the "--no-desktop" option, it takes over the desktop, replaces my Fluxbox wallpaper with the wallpaper I have selected in Gnome, and replaces the right-click Fluxbox menu with the right-click Gnome desktop menu. Killing the process restores Fluxbox right-click functionality.
By the way, the light-blue font in your post is difficult to read on the blue LQ background. Restoring the defaults would be easier on the eyes.