You know, I keep encountering the *same* explanation for Akonadi and Nepomuk. Essentially, it is that these beasts are going to be really helpful, and even essential, Real Soon Now. Meanwhile, they just bog the system down to a truly incredible degree.

I've encountered this sort of a 'stuff it down the users' throats' approach to "new technology" before, if only I could remember where. Oh, yeah, I got it: it was in Windows!

Duh!

I'm sure that this approach somehow made sense to the KDE developers who are planning to put some (all?) their eggs in the Akonadi and Nepomuk baskets. But, whatever sense it makes has eluded my grasp, and that of many other Linux users. Currently, disabling those services is the FIRST task on first KDE start up on the new servers and desktops I'm building. And, check out all the frantic, "how do I kill these P. o. Sh. software packages" traffic on LinuxQuestions that followed the release of Slackware 13 with KDE4.

As far as I can tell, at least within the Slackware community, all that's been accomplished so far is to

• Convince us that some leaders on the KDE team can't tell the difference between a 'really cool idea' and a 'really cool idea that works'. Seriously, guys, that's an important distinction.
• Convince us that Akonadi and Nepomuk are evil entities to be avoided, along with all their offspring.
• Convince us that it might be time to hold our nose and check out Gnome again.

Frankly, I think it's probably in best interest of the KDE team to issue an all points "Oops" and apology, a promise to make sure these P.o.Sh. packages remain OUT of future KDE releases until they are beyond -- way beyond! -- the 'slower than Vista' stage. We also need an official HOWTO 'dig them out of your system'.

No doubt big egos are involved -- certainly the guy who I presume is the key player, one "Dr. Ansgar Bernardi" of semanticdesktop.org is self-impressed. Who else but someone who had his head so far up his own a** that he thinks living in dark warm sh** is heaven could pen a bit of techno-purple prose like "a comprehensive solution for extending the personal desktop into a collaboration environment which supports both the personal information management and the sharing and exchange across social and organizational relations."

To the degree I can parse it out, all he said was, "we have a better way to share info with your co-workers and friends"! How many times have us old geeks heard THAT before? Gee whiz, even the educational whiz-bang PhD my school teacher wife deals with can't sling the jargon sh** that well! And NOBODY babbles meaningless jargon like they do!

But guys, we're trying to do real work out here, and system "services" that currently -- no matter what they *might* do in the future -- turn our desktops into slo-mo muck do NOT belong on our machines.

Sincerely,

GaHillBIlly

GaHillBilly wrote:I've encountered this sort of a 'stuff it down the users' throats' approach to "new technology" before, if only I could remember where.

KDE can be built without these components. Petition the Slackware developers to not include them in the distribution.

In Gentoo, I can build without Nepomuk/Semantic Desktop and Akonadi does not start by default.

"KDE can be built without these components. Petition the Slackware developers to not include them in the distribution."

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the attitude, "we've stuffed sh## into this package, but we won't fuss if you work hard enough to figure out how to scrape it out before it gets all over you!" . . . is not much of a step up from the Microsoft approach.

I ALREADY figured out how to disable it in Slackware. But, the point is, I should NOT have needed to do so.

GaHillBilly

Alec wrote:In Gentoo, I can build without Nepomuk/Semantic Desktop and Akonadi does not start by default.

And I think Nepomuk will also not be started by default even if available, i.e. I think it has to be activated in KDE's system settings.
Could of course be different between distributions.

Cheers,
_

The solution is may be to provide two kinds of KDE:

- a KDE version for distributions (99% of normal and stupid PC users looking for simplicity and efficiency)
- a KDE version for clever developers able to understand cool features for the future.

Everybody would be happy.

- a KDE version for distributions (99% of normal and stupid PC users looking for simplicity and efficiency)
- a KDE version for clever developers able to understand cool features for the future.

Ah, yes. With that attitude, you'll lead KDE down the path of amazing success blazed by Stallman with Gnu Hurd!

GaHillBilly

bcooksley wrote:Note that in the future KDE functionality, especially in KDE PIM will be severely reduced if Akonadi is not present and functional. This will become more evident in KDE 4.4 and 4.5.

This will be counteracted however by PIM applications removing their internal protocol implementations and becoming lighter in the process.

I'm a Gentoo user and recently upgraded from 3.5.10 to 4.3.3.
In your /home/username directory you'll find a file .xsession-errors.
In case of problems this file will usually tell what is wrong.
With kde-3 this file was at the most 1KB in size after running some time.
In kde4 it grew to 40 50 KB.
Needless to say that searching for a message concerning a problem is no fun with such a large file.
In gentoo you have a plethora of tools concerning your install.
So I used "equery depends" to find out what programs depend on nepomuk.
I then changed the useflags to -semantic-desktop and reinstalled what depended on nepomuk and removed nepomuk.
Akonadi was never installed because I didn't install pim.
Don't need it.
I rebooted and everything runs as before except this.
I now notice that .xsession-errors contains the following line:
Could not find 'nepomukserver' executable.
So I still have to tell kde not to start nepomuk.
But where do I find the config.file to disable nepomuk?
Thanks in advance.
Gerard.

Edit:I removed some files in ~/.kde/share that had nepomuk in them and now the message doesn't show up anymore.
Everything runs a lot faster now.

I am currently interested in running kontact without the rest of kde... especially without semantic desktop elements and the like.

Disabled it in systemsettings and I get a warning on every kontact start that it is not running. I know! I disabled it on purpose! *annoyed* Because I dont need it.

Hmm, strange.

Nepomuk is not required in any released version so far.

I will be needed for some address book related functionality in the upcoming release (KDE SC 4.4), but not for any earlier ones.

Cheers,
_

I'll totally use it once it is working. Who knows, maybe the way I work with my computer will change with working semanthic searches and all, but right now I have not seen anything that makes me happier than locate, find and grep.

Strangely, I get this notification that some features will not be available. And I am totally ok with that. However, I'd love a 'please don't tell me again untill next release' checkbox on a notification like that on something I use every day: kontact.

But I shure like where things are headding.

Looks like Akonadi will be forced on Kmail users and with it Nepomuk.....

They have big $$$ from industry and big governement - no surprise they have that pushing power. Is the KDE project being hijacked by IBM SAP and the EU?

Easy to go the next step: to turn nepumok into an all knowing little utility that could chat to "insert relevant secret service here".

Can anyone confirm nepomuk is clean? Anyone really thoroughly checked all the lines?

hansrast wrote:They have big $$$ from industry and big governement - no surprise they have that pushing power. Is the KDE project being hijacked by IBM SAP and the EU?

Ahem... Can you back these statements with some proof? Otherwise they're just a way to flame and/or induce FUD. Doubt is not proof of anything.

I have amd athlon 1800+ on via kt266, with 256MB, yes it is ancient.

anyway, yesterday I debian dist-upgraded KDE to unstable release(4.x)
Why would I need all this stuff?? nepomuk, akonadi, akgregator etc...
They trashed my system when it started.
Plus they require MYSQL to be installed, in addition to VIRTUOSO DB server??? plus I can't get rid of libsqlite dependency - why would I ever need sqlite, and still they push it into my throat!

Akregator is an optional application, doesn't start unless you deliberately instruct it to. Akonadi will only start if it's services are required, which is probably caused by Plasma's clock. Assuming that unstable 4.x = trunk, then right click on the clock > Digital Clock Settings > Calendar. Untick "Show Events".

Finally, due to the resources of your system being constrained, i'd also recommend disabling Nepomuk completely, go to System Settings > Desktop Search.