Y'all,

I made an account just to come here and complain. But before I do, I have to put my complaint into the context of a compliment. I hope this reveals how important this complaint is to me. I'll also suggest to you that this has been a problem for many others and should be a high priority to address.

I've been using KDE full time on my desktop since 2003 (formerly, I used Windows). I love KDE and for many years I loved Kmail. Kmail was, at one time, the best email program bar none. It had a nice GUI, was exceptionally functional, and (relevant to this discussion) handled a large trove of emails without struggling. KDE + Kmail was the best GUI and back end combination ever to grace the email end user desktop. I sung its praises. And I still would... But...

Enter Akonadi.

At some point (several years ago), Akonadi became required for Kmail to function. I learned that the underlying data would still be stored in maildir(ish) format, which was satisfactory for such a stupid experiment as this (if not for that, I would have immediately ditched Kmail, never to return). So I pressed on, because I want to be a team player and use a great product, if it could become such a great thing again. The initial migration to Kmail2+Akonadi was exceptionally painful. I lost days, maybe weeks, of productivity. Then, my last two dristro upgrades (Mageia 5 to 6, and yesterday 6 to 7) produced even more pain each time. We're now years into substantial pain every time I try to do anything of substance with my system (move large amounts of email, upgrade my distribution, etc.).

I hoped that this grand experiment would produce an improvement. I really wanted this to work for all the slick functionality that Akonadi *could* offer, if only it worked. It has not. The Kmail+Akonaid team has failed. Or rather, the Kmail team has unbelievably succeeded at ruining the very best thing going. As I type this, my disk is spinning 100% and my CPU is crunching who knows what. A simple Dolphin query for the size of my email folder can be completed in seconds. In fact, *while* Kmail+Akonadi is still crunching (16+ hours now), in less than 30 seconds, Dolphin tells me I have 18.3 GB in 244 subfolders containing 273,725 files. The file system doesn't choke even while Kmail+Akonadi tries relentlessly to choke it.

Akonadi is **hopelessly broken**. It is a virus. It is malware. I tried to move emails out of my inbox into another folder (as I do every so often to keep the file count manageable). It choked after only 500 emails. This is utter garbage. It is a colossal failure. And it's not getting any better.

I'm not the only person to have problems related to Akonadi ruining various things related to Kmail. Here are some forum threads showing similar / related Kmail+Akonadi issues that have frustrated other users just in the last few months:

viewtopic.php?f=215&t=162376 - "akonadiserver 100% CPU + eating all ram until system freeze"
viewtopic.php?f=215&t=162239 - "akonadi won't start"
viewtopic.php?f=215&t=161955 - "KMail fails to acquire lock"
viewtopic.php?f=215&t=162228 - "Kmail overwrites Symbolic Link for my Local Email Folders"
viewtopic.php?f=215&t=161924 - "All my folders, and the mail they contained, are gone"
viewtopic.php?f=215&t=159963 - "Akonadi timeout"
viewtopic.php?f=215&t=160226 - "Kontact freeze, waiting to load Mail, Error in akonadi"
viewtopic.php?f=215&t=135957 - "The akonadi system is not operational"

I realize these aren't identical problems. But they all have one thing in common: Akonadi caused Kmail to cease functioning correctly. This never happened before Akonadi was made a requirement to use Kmail.

My request is quite simple (at least in theory). Make Akonadi optional. Kmail used to handle maildir(ish) directory structures just fine. Allow us to go back to that. I am well aware search might take a little longer and I am completely happy with that. You all (Akonadi/Kmail/KDE developers) have had plenty of time to get Akonadi to work without killing off Kmail. You've failed. I want my old Kmail back...

Thanks,

V-

varrin wrote:Akonadi is **hopelessly broken**. It is a virus. It is malware ...

I do not share your opinion. I'm working with Kontact+Akonadi alrready some years. It' true - the first steps in KDE4 were painful. But since KDE5 akonadi is working increasingly stable. I use at office Kontact 5.1.3 and at home the latest from Neon and i have no reason to complain. Sure, there are problems every now and then, but no more or less as with other KDE parts or apps.

You write, you upgrade major versions of your distro. Any upgrades I've tried so far ended up with failure (not only related to akonadi). Give Akonadi a try and start with new, fresh installation.

Every upgrade prior to this most recent was a fresh install. Every time, Akonadi was a wreck (days of activity, presumably to rebuild databases, and loss of functionality during and after that process). This time, for the first time, I didn't do a fresh install. *Everything* else works perfectly. Akonadi+Kmail, no. I've been trying to move emails from folder to folder and even in small quantities, it chokes. I gave up on the process for now. Seems I'll just have a forever growing inbox until I find another email program...

V-

Thanks for the rant, which is not a rant, actually, but a careful description of kmail.
As you, I used and loved kmail before akonadi.
It was fast, stable, searchable, good gpg integration...
After the introduction of akonadi (which I remember as painful, as you describe it), I ran away from kmail. Today I tried it again. Result? kmail would not start, instead I got a message, that akonadi crashed. Not an error message. A crash. On a fresh debian system with no migration issues. I could not get rid of the message, obviously, akonadi tried to restart itself.
After how many years of akonadi development?
No, I will not file a bug for a completely broken system, it's a waste of time.

I googled "kmail without akonadi" and came here.
I really hope, that kmail will be available without akonadi.
Until then, I keep away from it.
Where are those great developers, that designed and coded the pure kmail before akonadi?
Maybe you could do a fork? Or is there a fork, that I missed?
A good (that includes stable and fast) mail program would be really appreciated.
Thunderbird is too slow.

More than two years ago, I came here to make a simple, even if maybe difficult, request:

* Create a version of Kmail that does not rely on Akonadi.

That request is based on a mountain of user reports that Kmail with Akonadi is broken. One above reply indicated it's, "increasingly stable... there are problems every now and then, but no more or less as with other KDE parts or apps." Maybe it's 'increasingly stable', but the bar was set quite low. But I strenuously disagree with the second part. It is horribly broken and remains so after yet another two years.

The other subsequent reply confirms what I have said above: Kmail with Akonadi is broken. Google "kmail akonadi" and see for yourself what comes up. Every glowing review is about the functionality / interface, which I agree is brilliant. The Kmail part itself is absolutely the best. But the shocking proportion of Akonadi criticism, bug reports, crash reports, etc., should give any competent dev pause. For mission critical software, a dysfunctional backend is a disaster.

So here I am again. I just downloaded email for the first time in a year and a half because I'm ***afraid*** of Kmail (really Akonadi). But I have to switch email providers and had no choice.

Sure enough, Kmail + Akonadi is ***still broken***. Moving even small amounts of email from one folder to another causes out-of-sync data, akonadi crashes, Kmail "please wait" screens, and duplicate data. It's a completely dysfunctional wreck. It is not, "no more or less," it is an absolute dumpster fire in the midst of an otherwise outstanding desktop environment.

I'm a huge fan of open source software and have been using KDE for nearly 2 decades now. This one issue is driving me away. It is mind boggling to me that this level of dysfunction persists after a decade of destroying the best email software on earth. And nobody has lifted a finger to supply a Kmail without Akonadi solution. If I knew how, I'd do it myself.

Please please please don't try to fix Akonadi anymore. Please create a Kmail that doesn't require it. I don't even care if it's not quite as slick. I just want it to **work**...

V-

I agree with varrin. I switched to Thunderbird some time ago and have not looked back. Akonadi is Bad News.

Bill Gee

I agree with OP. Akonadi is a failed experiment. Back in the days I was keen to see semantic desktop ideas coming to KDE. But today I think every single one of them have failed. Nepomuk, Strigi, Baloo and Akonadi are synonymous to huge pain if you are a power user. Having multiple kernel source trees in your home? Say bye bye Baloo. You are using the Exchange connector in Akonadi? Bad idea. No fresh setup of all your mail accounts after a major Akonadi upgrade? Not good.

I already switched to NeoMutt with mbsync/isync for work mail accounts in 2019. Now I'll do the same for private stuff as KMail/Akonadi just ate a mail I wanted to send again. Yes, it ate the original and neither send it out nor stored it in 'sent' folder. Bye bye KDE PIM. It was nice before Akonadi hit. Maybe we see us again in 10 years. Maybe. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Yeah, that's true unfortunately. I recently set up a kmail for a test on my account for mailinglists. Just like two weeks ago, now it shows over 8000 messages in the trash folder, while Thunderbird and the web interface says there are just 8. Try to refresh the folder, restart akonadi, nothing helps, kmail/akonadi sees over 8000 mails that are not there.

Good I went for test before trusting it with personal mails. It's a pity state.

KMail 5.18.3 (21.08.3) on Arch.

Same experience here.
KMail worked great for me before akonadi. I could recommend it to others.
Since akonadi, I still use it, but I cannot recommend it to anybody.
I spent the last days trying to delete 10000 unread emails. It takes ages. Some emails it doesn't delete, but stops deleting, so I have to try to select only emails it will be able to delete. While doing this, akonadi crashed a few times. I did a akonadictl fsck. It did something, it stopped with some error.
Now I upgraded to OpenSUSE Leap 15.3.
Akonadi crashed when starting.
It seems removing some datadb directory somewhere in .local/ keeps it from crashing, but now it takes ages to I guess rebuild its database...

I was there at the KDE4 Core meeting in Trysil in 2006.... 15 years ago. Back then akonadi was still new, but already being worked on. Now we are 15 years later. 15 years, and it still is not working well. And it is technically outdated right now.
I'm running on a 8 core machine, and this whole akonadi stuff is single-threaded, one core running akonadiserver, one core running the SQL database.

We should get rid of it. It makes things worse than without such a fancy solution, and it is not as flexible and powerful as e.g. ... gmail.

Could KMail / Kontact be a pain point for someone new to Linux / KDE that could cause them to run away screaming in pain and bewilderment? Yes you say? Then I agree Akonadi should be dropped, or at least made optional.

Because clearly the benefits(?) are not worth it.

Actually, (I know this needs a separate thread, and I apologize for that in advance) - KMail needs a dead-simple version, a KMail Light if you will, to be the default email client. Much like Showfoto is a light version of digikam...

geewilliam wrote:I agree with varrin. I switched to Thunderbird some time ago and have not looked back. Akonadi is Bad News.

Bill Gee

Sad to say, I'm now experiencing problems with TBird too. My suspicion is that the troubles actually begin with AOL and their mistaken idea of "security", but I start to fear that no third-party e-mail client is going to work as it should.

not sure but i think i have tried the above combo kmail-akonadi and ended up with a mess, pretty new kde neon user so will stay with Thunderbird for now