What is bonobo-activation?
 

I was doing ps -e looking for processes to kill and noticed a new one, Bonobo-activation. I have seen this before but not on this system. Is this a security problem? or something that I am supposed to have but never niticed? I killed it, rebooted and it did not come back. I did a google and I cant really find a definition or what it does, just lots of programming related things. Thanks.

i'm not sure what the bonobo-activation thing is, but it seems like it's part of gnome and isn't something to worry about security-wise:

http://developer.gnome.org/arch/component/bonobo.html

i'm on slackware 10.x and i have no bonobo processes, but i've only installed cd1 (no kde/gnome) so maybe that's why...

It just appeared in the process list and I have never seen it there before so thats why I became concerned about it. Thanks.

Bonobo is a Component Model that was created for GNOME and it's layered on top of CORBA, and inspired after the microsoft COM layer. (A component model provides a way to activate objects dynamically, including some that didn't exist originally, and of course it's through a common interface). Bonobo controls allow for visual embedding of components. They are a powerful way to package high level widgets, they are pluggable and interchangable, similar to ActiveX controls, and they are used for pluggable apps like Nautilus and Evolution. It is not anything to be oncerned with.