It's pretty much a resource hog on my P4 with 1GB ram. As an end user, what benefits would I really see by using this. And is there a way to stop it from always trying to start up? What a pain in the a#@.

Moved to Office & Productivity.

I think it's easier to share data between different PIM (personal information management, KMail, KOrganizer, Kontact) applications.

In the future Akonadi will allow PIM applications to universally store account settings between them, and make it easily accessible.

Example: Using Lion Mail and KMail with the same settings. You read a mail in Lion Mail and it is marked read in KMail automatically.

It's not only for PIM data. The idea is that it will make data available to any application that chooses to use it. And because so much data will be available, I'm pretty sure that many applications will do so, but this is in the future.

I'm guessing there's no way to stop it from starting up every time...

Can I safely uninstall it without breaking KDE4?

If you don't have any applications using it, it shouldn't start by itself. Check to make sure you don't have any "Akonadi Compatibility Resources" in any of your KDEPIM applications.

Alec wrote:If you don't have any applications using it, it shouldn't start by itself. Check to make sure you don't have any "Akonadi Compatibility Resources" in any of your KDEPIM applications.

Thanks for the suggestion. I would much rather uninstall it then have to dig around to see where its being called from. Better yet, it would be great if it didn't start at all since I never asked for it in the first place... but that's KDE4.

Akonadi is supposed to be dynamic - starting only when something calls it. You'd be much wiser to find out what is calling it before deciding to uninstall it.

Switched to gnome as KDE4 is ridiculous. What should be a simple thing like turning off a service I don't need is turns into yet another fight with KDE4.

mattydee wrote:Switched to gnome as KDE4 is ridiculous. What should be a simple thing like turning off a service I don't need is turns into yet another fight with KDE4.

Glad it worked out for you!

The question was, "Why would I want to use Akonadi?".

The responses being given, here and elsewhere, are a dishonest dodge rather than answers.

To say that, "in the future Akonadi will allow PIM applications to universally store account settings between them, and make it easily accessible" is essentially the same as saying, "right now, they are useless drags on your system".

The fact is, the only HONEST answer I've been able to discover that "some KDE developers who can't distinguish 'cool' from 'functional' want you to test their pre-alpha software"!

GaHillBilly

Alec wrote:

mattydee wrote:Switched to gnome as KDE4 is ridiculous. What should be a simple thing like turning off a service I don't need is turns into yet another fight with KDE4.

Glad it worked out for you!

It actually didn't.

GNOME's equivalent is EDS (Evolution Data Server) which will also be started by any application requesting it.

All current desktop systems use session services to share data, configuration, state information, etc. because synchronizing access between connections to a single process is a lot easier and less error-prone than synchronizing access on any low level resource, e.g. files.

This has been used for ages to share resources on system level, e.g. printer spoolers, and session level, e.g. password and cookie storage.

EDS moved this into the domain of PIM data, i.e. it has support for contacts and calendar (though I read they are planning support for mail as well), Akonadi currently has support for contacts, calendar, mail (and newsgroups), bookmarks and notes.

Years of experience with "reimplement everything in each applications" followed by several years of "share common parts in libraries" has lead to the understanding that, while some things need to be implemented differently and some things can be done by sharing libraries, some things are better delegated to programs specialized for a certain task.

Those who remember the dark ages of the first phase, e.g. on the "desktop" using DOS programs, will certainly remember how later systems made it unnecessary to check whether one's program would support one's sound card or even mouse.

Those who entered the personal computing era later might remember the change from systems where programs would block such resources as sound or printers to those which would process requests to such resources as a queue.

Some solutions are good at all times, some need to be re-thought when requirements change. Of course such requirement changes will not hit everybody at the same time, maybe not even everybody at all.
Those already feeling the pain of "too clunky" will obviously welcome the changes as an escape route from their world of hurt, other might not care (both solutions work) and some will not like it at all.

Cheers,
_

This is very interesting, and since I'm not a programmer, I can't really comment on this other than to say thank you for explaining this concept. However, as simple user, the difference is that EDS starts quietly in the background and seems to use very little resources. I wouldn't even notice it was there if I didn't check the system monitor. Akonadi on the other hand, hits you like a freight train, and doesn't start properly half the time.

So from my perspective, the problem has been solved. Although not really since I keep coming back to KDE4 hoping/wishing that it has become as good as KDE3 used to be, but that's another rant...

A few days ago, I was looking through my old files, and I found this little beauty. That's KDE 3.3 on SuSE Linux 9.2 in 2004. I had the problem where every time I navigate to a new page, it would spawn a new toolbar:



Good old days of KDE 3... Oh yeah, and it was also pretty slow back then - if I remember correctly, the huge speed boost came in version 3.4. (Not to mention that SuSE itself took over 5 minutes to boot! That was way slower than Windows)

Also, anyone remember aRts? I've got some screenshots of that crashing in early 3.5...

So for anyone complaining, yeah, KDE 3.5 did get fast and stable (after 3 years of feature-freeze), but it's not like it was always like that. Quit complaining.

Alec wrote:So for anyone complaining, yeah, KDE 3.5 did get fast and stable (after 3 years of feature-freeze), but it's not like it was always like that. Quit complaining.

That's precisely it. KDE4 is now like KDE3 was in the old days. So in a sense, from a user perspective, a regression.