Starting other programs

In KDE 2 and KDE 3 there are several ways to start other programs from within
your application. Here is a short summary of your options with reasons why
you should or should not use them.

1. fork + exec

You never want to use this unless you have a very good reason why it is 
impossible to use KProcess.

2. KProcess

You want to use this if you need to start a new process which needs to be a 
child of your process, e.g. because you want to catch stdout/stderr or need 
to send it data via stdin. You should never use this to start other KDE 
applications unless your application is called kgdb :-) If you need to
send/receive text like data to/from the process, you are probably better 
off with KProcIO

3. KProcIO

Like KProcess. Unlike KProcess, this class actually makes it easy to 
send data to and receive data from the process.

4. startServiceByDesktopPath

Preferred way to launch desktop (KDE/Gnome/X) applications or KDE services. 
The application/service must have a .desktop file. It will make use of 
KDEinit for increased startup performance and lower memory usage. These 
benefits only apply to applications available as KDEinit loadable module (KLM)

5. KRun

Generic way to open documents/applications/shell commands. Uses
startServiceBy.... where applicable. Offers the additional 
benefit of startup-notification.
KRun can start any application, from the binary or the desktop file,
it will determine the mimetype of a file before running the
preferred handler for it, and it can also start shell commands.
This makes KRun the recommended way to run another program in KDE 2.
