I am running Arch 64bit and I just upgraded to KDE SC 4.5 RC1 from the kde-unstable repos. Nepomuk has never worked for me, and with every new dot release I check to see if it finally does... and 4.5 is no different.

To cut to the chase attached is a screenshot. Please tell me what I am doing wrong. I started with a fresh ~/.kde4, enabled Nepomuk and Strigi, let it do it's indexing, and I get this error. The RC version of kio_nepomuksearch is installed.

Code: Select all

pacman -Qo $(locate kio_nepomuksearch)
/usr/lib/kde4/kio_nepomuksearch.so is owned by kdebase-runtime 4.4.90-1


Have you tried waiting until Nepomuk's file indexing is completed?

Thanks bcooksley.

I did wait till the indexing finished completely... ~60GB took about a full day to index. I don't know what others' expectations are, but that seems like a long time. Nepomuk now works as expected... It does not have the high CPU and high RAM usage I was experiencing in previous versions... and most importantly, it finds what I'm looking for.

Well done to the Nepomuk team!

So, in my quest for successful searching for files with KDE, I stumble upon this page. Here is what I found out so far:

To search for files in KDE, you need to enable this thing called Nepomuk, which may or may not be related to another thing called strigi, which take about 48 hours to "index" the files on my hard drive(s)(s)(s). Haven't done this yet, for some peculiar reason. Then, you may or may not be able to find what you're looking for with dolphin. (currently, dolphin tells me I have no files containing the letter "k" on my hard drive(s), which is unlikely considering the desktop environment I'm running)

Or else, you could use kfind, which seems to behave a little more reasonably. However, this tool does not seem to provide thumbnail previews of files found in the search results. No prizes for guessing what type of computer user this program is geared towards, then. (Hint - not photographers)

Then there is that bloody ridiculous yellow foetus-looking thing in the top right of the corner which you can't get rid of...

@roooooooooot if your looking to search primarily photos I'd look at digikam

Erm... yeah, I've used digikam before. Same thing i.e. massive indexing operation before I can find anything. Anyway, it's not a case of primarily photos. I just think that a search function should ALWAYS display thumbnails, and any program that doesn't is either due to limitations on the part of the programmer (I really wish that I could program, things would be a lot more sensible I can tell you), or excessive drug use (hey man, we forgot...) or maliciousness (ha ha ha, this'll annoy 'em).

I don't mean to be a turd in the jelly, but I just find a lot of software today just defies logic. It's as though people have deliberately set out to not include stuff that should be there or include stuff that should not. I mean, who in their right mind would think that an icon in the top right of the screen that cannot be removed is a good idea?! Who would think that a search function that is limited to searching for, er, files that you probably need a good idea of the name of already because you can't see them (in the case of image files)?!

Seriously, do KDE devs (or any devs, for that matter) ever sit down with a non-software-developer, or a casual computer user and say "hey, what do you think of this, a yellow thing in the top right of the screen, great idea huh?" or "check out my awesome search function I just coded, oh by the way you need to know the name of your photo BEFORE you search"? Because I think a lot of programmers would produce a lot less stupid ideas if they did.

On the bright side, KDE looks very nice, and doesn't crash as much as I was led to believe (I had some problems the other day with 4.5, but 4.4 is running well), and has some very nice software.

But, when I click search, it should bloody well search! And properly, too! And no indexing rubbish either!!! (Catfish is brilliant, by the way, why not rip the source code for that and "convert" it to qt, or something?)

@rooooot Though I see your point of view and understand your frustration, I would have put my point across a little more 'nicely'. We must understand that no one owes anything to anybody here. A little courtesy wouldn't hurt anyone.

There are many avenues you can use to resolve the problems you are facing.... these forums, brainstorm, the bug tracker, etc. Granted neither of them are perfect, this is what we, the community have to work with. Whether we use them constructively or not is entirely up to us.

As for digikam and photo searching, there is a feature where you can draw the image you are searching for roughly and it will try to find the photo for you. Maybe that would suit you better then tagging or organizing your photos in folders.

[edit] If you really can't stand Nepomuk, you can try using Recollrunner http://kde-apps.org/content/show.php/re ... ent=128203 or simply relying on your own organization skills. I mostly rely on the later.

drsjlazar wrote: If you really can't stand Nepomuk, you can try using Recollrunner http://kde-apps.org/content/show.php/re ... ent=128203 or simply relying on your own organization skills. I mostly rely on the later.

as far as I've seen recoll doesn't show pic thumbnails (at leas the gui and kio don't)

and rooooooooooooooot there are a few other linux desktop search tools - beagle, tracker, recoll, google desktop and maybe others - no idea which, if any display thumbnails.

@ drsjlazar: Oh alright, I'll try and be nice in future on kdeforum, just for you.



(I'm serious...I expected a whole bunch of "rm -f roooooooooot" and other such insults to be on this page by the time I got back here. The digikam "draw the picture and it searches" thing sounds like genius if it works, gonna try it out!)

Like I said,catfish is quite good ('cept it' gtk so doesn't look so good {please don't tell me about gtk-qt-engine...})

Anyway, sorry.

LOL just for me? I'm honored

I'm almost a nobody here. And when I said I understand your frustration, I wasn't joking. KWin is totally broken for me in 4.5. I have a bug report since the early RC releases but it went almost unseen until after I started making some noise. I am using Compiz as a WM right now.

Free software doesn't guarantee a trouble-free experience. But the more you get involved in the community the louder your voice is... If you don't like the Cashew AKA 'fetus in the corner'... and I'm sure you're not the only one... garner some support to make it optional.

As for searching, I use 'locate', 'find' and organization. Nothing quite beats that. Let us know how the digikam fuzzy search works for you. I take it you are not the type to go for another OS just because of a few hurdles... not like other OS's dont have hurdles of their own...

P.S. No need to apologize to me.

drsjlazar wrote:<snip> If you don't like the Cashew AKA 'fetus in the corner'... and I'm sure you're not the only one... garner some support to make it optional.

<snip>

or maybe Google http://www.google.com/search?client=ope ... 8&oe=utf-8

@ drsjlazar

Only kwin was broken in 4.5? How did you manage that? Just about everything broke for me on 4.5. Like, I right click a file in dolphin, and it took a full 30 seconds to bring up the context menu. Copying files to another drive resulted in horrendous problems! Back on 4.4 now, much better!

"I take it you are not the type to go for another OS just because of a few hurdles... "

-Just look at my distro...

@ google01103, yeah, the "ihatethecashewplasmoid". Haven't got that to work for a while, and I don't think anyone else has either. If you try and add it, it doesn't do anything, and then you can't get rid of it through the add/remove widgets panel. I just assumed it was some sort of arms race between the guy who made the widget and the guys who make kde, you know, "quick, recode plasma desktop so that no one can hide our precious widget"...just kidding!

Maybe I'm not doing it right?

@roooooooooot: Something is definitely wrong with either the installation of KDE 4.5 or your distributors packages ( or equivalents )

Well, archlinux maintainers still have kde 4.5 in the "testing" packages. According to them, I guess, 4.5 has not proven itself worthy of being included in "extra" yet. I was curious and tested it out.

"Something is definitely wrong with either the installation of KDE 4.5 or your distributors packages". Hmm. Or...maybe there are a couple of problems with kde 4.5? Just another possibility, please don't flame me!

roooooooooot wrote:Well, archlinux maintainers still have kde 4.5 in the "testing" packages. According to them, I guess, 4.5 has not proven itself worthy of being included in "extra" yet. I was curious and tested it out.

"Something is definitely wrong with either the installation of KDE 4.5 or your distributors packages". Hmm. Or...maybe there are a couple of problems with kde 4.5? Just another possibility, please don't flame me!

Here's a test, find and dl a live cd with kde4.5 install or run it live and see if the problem is Arch packaging or 4.5. Note: finding a live with kde4.5 may be hard as it's pretty new (released 8/10)

Maybe 4.5 is in testing because it arrived after the latest release of Arch, I think you'll find that's the case with other distro's