Hello there,

I noticed this annoying problem: As I use KDE desktop, many kio_http processes appear and do not seem to close (when I run konqueror about 15-20 kio_http processes appear), as well as many kio_file processes or kio_pop3 processes. It's eating up my RAM. Can anyone help?

I don't think those processes are relevant with konqueror as browser. If I'm not mistaken they are part of the KDE general I/O system and thus not supposed to stop when web browsing stops.

Keep also in mind that web browsers are not the only processes to actually access internet resources, especially in a DE like KDE.

No, Konqueror is using kio_http for the actual data transfer.
It is correct that this is part of the KIO communication framework, but Konqueror is using that framework.

The system works like this (simplified):
- a process needs to transfer data from/to a location, e.g. http in case of web browsing, pop3 in case of emails from a POP3 server.

- so it asks KIO for a transfer job

- KIO then looks if a helper process (such as kio_http) is currently available/idle
- if there is one, the job is then processed by this helper
- if there isn't one, a new helper process is created

- when a helper process finishes its current job, it stays around for a while to see if it can get a new one
- if it can't, it quits

So in situations where there are burst of job requests, e.g. Konqueror opening a bookmark folder as tabs, there will be a lot of KIO helper processes.
They'll exit after some time of inactivity.

This waiting for new jobs instead of terminating immediately is a trick to avoid "expensive" process creations. Expensive in the sense that it takes create the process, load all libraries and link all symbols and for the process to read its config (if it has some), etc.

Cheers,
_

Note also, that the memory usage shown to you by most applications is flawed, and the memory shared between the kio_http processes is quite high...