This is my first post here, so I think it would be better to introduce myself first.

My name is Augusto and I've been using KDE for almost 9 years now. I jumped in the KDE 4 vagon on version 4.3, I think.

For many years I have been able to trim KDE down to my liking (yes, I am the kind of user who counts applications and tries to minimize usage of system resources). It is important to me, and I understand whoever thinks differently but for me the main reason for using Linux is that you can personalize it however you want.

For instance, I don't use nepimuk myself but I love the idea behind akonadi and I use it every day. The main PIM applications that I use are kadressmanager, korganizer and kmail (with two IMAP accounts).

The agents that I use everyday are:

1) davcal for synchronizing my Gmail calendar (no, I don't use googlecal service)
2) vcard (my local contacts are in vcard, don't ask me why)
3) Two IMAP accounts
4) Birthdays and anniversaries.

That's all I want to use.

Now throughout time I have accumulated a number of agents which I think may or may not be necessary:

5) Outgoing mail sender (or something like that). Necessary to be able to send emails, am I right?
6) Email filters. I use filters on kmail (with spamassasin) so my guess it is that I need it.
7) Email archiver. At the beginning I tried to kill this one, but kmail was giving me trouble, so it stayed even if I don't archive anything (I want my email on the IMAP server, not locally)
8. A new one: email folder archiver. What's the difference with the previous one? Why is it there? Do I really need it?
9) Local email folders. Now this one I would like to get rid off because it pollutes my kmail list of servers: I would like to just see my two IMAP accounts. I have tried at the beginning to get rid of it, but it kept on recreating itself. Also, is it needed by the outgoing mail service? I would like to get rid of it.
10) New mail agent. I don't need it. I use a plasmoid that checks my accounts every ten minutes. If I have new email, I fire up kmail in order to read it. Also, my IMAP agents are most of the time disabled: I have set kmail to enable them when it starts up and then they synchronize. So the new mail service becomes useless for me. Can it be turned off without making kmail misbehave?
11) Another new one: migration agent. I did not have the guts to kill this one. What does it do? What does it migrate? Different versions of akonadi? Why is it always on then?

I already killed notes agent (I don't use knotes, but I would love to have an Evernote syncing agent) and nepomuk feeder. They are gone and there have been no trouble at all.

I know that most of the agents I would like to get rid off are set to Autostart, but that can be disabled by editing the correspondent .desktop file.

I would like to hear your opinions/advices.

Thank you in advance.

TioDuke wrote:This is my first post here, so I think it would be better to introduce myself first.

Hello, and welcome to the KDE Community Forums!

5) Outgoing mail sender (or something like that). Necessary to be able to send emails, am I right?

Yes, that agent is responsible for sending mails.

6) Email filters. I use filters on kmail (with spamassasin) so my guess it is that I need it.

The filter agent performs local filtering, as you guessed.

7) Email archiver. At the beginning I tried to kill this one, but kmail was giving me trouble, so it stayed even if I don't archive anything (I want my email on the IMAP server, not locally)

It does nothing unless you ask it to do something, so it can be probably be left as is.

9) Local email folders. Now this one I would like to get rid off because it pollutes my kmail list of servers: I would like to just see my two IMAP accounts. I have tried at the beginning to get rid of it, but it kept on recreating itself. Also, is it needed by the outgoing mail service? I would like to get rid of it.

Unless you configured your identities (Configure KMail > Identities) to store sent messages and drafts on IMAP, local folders are required. Also they are kept in case you are using other types of accounts.

10) New mail agent. I don't need it. I use a plasmoid that checks my accounts every ten minutes. If I have new email, I fire up kmail in order to read it. Also, my IMAP agents are most of the time disabled: I have set kmail to enable them when it starts up and then they synchronize. So the new mail service becomes useless for me. Can it be turned off without making kmail misbehave?

Go to Configure KMail > Misc > Agents, select "New Mail Notifier", then "Configure", and uncheck all folders. This will make it stop monitoring for new mails.

11) Another new one: migration agent. I did not have the guts to kill this one. What does it do? What does it migrate? Different versions of akonadi? Why is it always on then?

Like others, it does nothing unless explicitly told so: it is needed because sometimes the internal format of items / storage changes and it's used to ensure everything is properly migrated.