Whoooo Hoooo!!!!
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| cmost Feb 17, 2014 8:17 PM EDT |
And angels rejoice! I always found Nepomuk to be a resource hog and therefore disabled it. Glad to hear that something else is forthcoming! |
| JaseP Feb 17, 2014 8:44 PM EDT |
You aren't the only one cheering... |
| linux4567 Feb 17, 2014 9:04 PM EDT |
I think the only reason this 'semantic desktop' nonsense was incorporated into KDE is because the EU paid the devs involved in this. On the other hand the article says Nepomuk is only being replaced with Baloo, which sounds eerily like Baloon (more bloatware?). I switched to TDE (Trinity DE) a long time ago so I couldn't care less what happens to KDE4. |
| Ridcully Feb 17, 2014 9:40 PM EDT |
I read this and have already added it to a "Stop Press" reference in Part 2. I am afraid my emotions were amazement, followed by cynical laughter. Linux4567, I don't want to steal my thunder but part 2 of my Removing and Disabling the Semantic Desktop will be out very shortly......In it, I have quoted what I believe to be the Nepomuk "mission statement" and the only conclusion I can make from it, is that there had to be pressure from a very large organisation to get the KDE developers to produce the utter "hash" that they have. 17 million euros translates into 25.68 million dollars Australian.......What an obscene waste. |
| Francy Feb 17, 2014 10:39 PM EDT |
some distros ( including mine ) has nepomuk disabled by default, and if I remember correctly, it was by popular demand ! |
| DrGeoffrey Feb 17, 2014 10:47 PM EDT |
And with Nepomuk disabled, KDE4 makes for a fairly nice desktop. Albeit, a tad on the heavy side. Give it a 4 GB laptop and KDE fairly screams (when compared to Windows (any version)). |
| Fettoosh Feb 18, 2014 8:42 AM EDT |
Quoting:What an obscene waste. @ridcully, Someone's waste could be someone else's treasure. since we all have a disable feature, why do we want to take choice from others? Personally, like I said before, I am now using KMail with Akonadi running but I keep Semantic Search disabled to read my GMail. KDE runs pretty decently on a Toshiba NB205 with 1GB only. I have no complains for what I use it for.. Just imagine how much better it would run with more resources like 2-4GB memory, faster processor like I7, and better graphics. Such resources are standard on many PCs now days and pretty soon will be on Tablets if not already. |
| jdixon Feb 18, 2014 9:10 AM EDT |
> Just imagine how much better it would run with more resources like 2-4GB memory, faster processor like I7,... So are you willing to pay for this for all the LXer readers you're regaling with your imaginings? If not, why not let them use something that works with their existing machines? |
| rnturn Feb 18, 2014 11:39 AM EDT |
Even with nepomuk disabled in my desktop configuration (there's still a nepomukserver process, though), akonadi seems to want to run a process linking to it. (Now if they'd only address the akonadi problem. 21 processes running 72 threads? Crimeny!) I, too, find myself wanting to add more memory to make KDE run a bit better. That 2.5GB isn't enough makes me a wonder how much other bloat I might be able to get rid of. Still find it amazing we need so much RAM for personal use. How did we ever get by running an Oracle database server with "only" 2GB of RAM and successfully serve 100-200 concurrent users on a regular basis with nary a peep from those users about performance (except when someone unleashed a "query from Hell"). Thank $DIETY that server didn't have a "modern" GUI (we actually opted for none at all). Probably saved us endless hours of fielding angry phone calls from users and their managers. |
| tuxchick Feb 18, 2014 12:48 PM EDT |
Now if they will divorce KMail from kdepim and Kwallet they'll be on the right track. |
| Fettoosh Feb 18, 2014 1:00 PM EDT |
Quoting: If not, why not let them use something that works with their existing machines? I didn't realize I was holding or twisting anyone's arms from using whatever they choose. Please feel free to use whatever you like. There you go @jdixon, you have my full open consent. Quoting:(Now if they'd only address the akonadi problem. 21 processes running 72 threads? Crimeny!) I, too, find myself wanting to add more memory to make KDE run a bit better. That 2.5GB isn't enough makes me a wonder how much other bloat I might be able to get rid of. I believe, like all FOSS developers, the KDE developers continually spend time and efforts to improve on their software code and the last effort to improve on Nepomuk is one example. In regards to memory usage by Akonadi, I agree it does use quite a bit of memory and the Akonadi threads remain even after exiting KMail, but read my previous post. Right now, while I am typing this comment, I am running KMail and watching video stream in Firefox, which is using 210 MB excluding any memory used by additional plug-ins and watching memory and processor resources using System Guard. I have 90MB left and it would be an issue if I need to run anything else, but that is all what I use this machine for, I can add one more GB if I need to. One thing I don't understand is, we tend to tolerate and accommodate for huge memory usage by adding more memory for other apps. like by a browser or others, but tend to complain about KDE too much, aren't we being biased? again, if KDE isn't your cup of tea, don't use it and stop complaining and give back constructive feedback. Complaining too much is really not healthy. |
| Fettoosh Feb 18, 2014 1:04 PM EDT |
Quoting:Now if they will divorce KMail from kdepim and Kwallet they'll be on the right track. I like that @TC and they might just do that at sometime in the future. I hope they do. |
| jdixon Feb 18, 2014 1:23 PM EDT |
> I didn't realize I was holding or twisting anyone's arms from using whatever they choose. Of course, in fact, you weren't. You just sort of casually noted, in passing. that if everyone upgraded to the latest and greatest machine, all these nasty memory and cpu problems KDE 4 evinces would go away. Equally casually ignoring the fact that for many people that's not an option. I apologize for letting my tiredness with the theme lead me into mischaracterizing the nature of the comment, and I hope I've done better this time. |
| mrider Feb 18, 2014 4:49 PM EDT |
Quoting:KDE fairly screams (when compared to Windows (any version)). I don't exactly consider that a high bar. :) |
| DrGeoffrey Feb 18, 2014 5:11 PM EDT |
Quoting:Quoting:KDE fairly screams (when compared to Windows (any version)). You're right. It's not. |
| Steven_Rosenber Feb 18, 2014 9:14 PM EDT |
There was a process called tracker-miner that used to kill my machine in GNOME 3. Is this the KDE equivalent? |
| Ridcully Feb 18, 2014 9:58 PM EDT |
@Fettoosh......sigh, not again.....I have never, never, never, never, never implied I wish to take away choice - my fervent wish is to RESTORE choice. My biggest irritation is that the KDE4 team have taken away my right to choice. A user should have the choice to use or not use the whole semantic desktop without any penalty in lost computer facilities. Currently, if you wholly disable everything in Nepomuk, Strigi and Akonadi, you lose the use of the entire KDEPIM section including KMail. I should be able to choose to disable those three packages but still have KDEPIM running perfectly. And don't get me started on KWallet......Okay......I should be able to choose to use KWallet for password storage, or alternatively store my password in KMail as was previously the case, and as Thunderbird does right now. As to "obscene waste"......ummm.....to expend $US23.3 million on getting the Nepomuk based semantic desktop going, only to ditch Nepomuk is obscene waste in my books unless it can be shown that something can be retrieved from the debacle. At the moment, they are going for Baloo.... http://community.kde.org/Baloo/Architecture You will recall that I described this as replacing a flat tyre with another tyre that has a slow leak. I think the simile remains apt. I wrote "obscene waste" in the heat of the moment of discovering roughly an hour or so before release of the article on LXer that Nepomuk was to be discarded.....I wasn't quite at the stage of screaming hysterically, but I was angry at the time. So, let's hope seriously that something can be salvaged and all that cash will not be wholly wasted. I repeat, I am not against the concept of a semantic desktop, per se and my article indicates where I think it would be of immense use.....but I am totally against the idea of "one size fits all" and that everybody should be forced to accept a semantic desktop whether they want or need it, or not. I want the users to retain full choice on how they deploy the facilities of KDE4 !! Oh look.......Ultimately, you can choose to use or not use KDE4......but that is a pretty awful option when you realise that it has been forced by removal of choice within KDE4 itself - by the KDE4 developers. And last but not least Fettoosh: Quoting:again, if KDE isn't your cup of tea, don't use it and stop complaining and give back constructive feedback. Complaining too much is really not healthy. What in heavens name do you think I have been doing in these three articles ? In each one I have made suggestions, explained where I saw faults, given ideas for improvement. THAT happens to be constructive feedback in my books and I could get very offended at your suggestion in that quote. Sorry, but that's my perception. |
| jazz Feb 19, 2014 10:20 AM EDT |
Wait! Are you guys telling me that a government payed 17 million euros to have my hard disk indexed, analyzed, SQLed and meta-dated? |
| JaseP Feb 19, 2014 10:30 AM EDT |
> Wait! Are you guys telling me that a government payed 17 million euros to have my hard disk indexed, analyzed, SQLed and meta-dated? Yes,... The NSA... But there was also that grant to the KDE foundation... |
| Fettoosh Feb 19, 2014 2:49 PM EDT |
Quoting:I have never, never, never, never, never implied I wish to take away choice No you didn't say it @Ridcully, but when you demand removing Nepomuk & Akonadi to index & tag user mail, it is just like saying removing semantic search. that is taking choice from users who want it and need it. KDE developers didn't take choice from you, they just changed the functionality of KMail in order to accommodate for other users, and for your convenience, they enabled others to disable Semantic Search if they so choose. I think one issue is a bit confusing to many is that they think Akonadi is part of the Semantic Search, that is not correct. KMail now needs Akonadi, which has its own tag indexing database. But Akonadi doesn't store body of emails in its database, it only stores indexes of tags. Nepomuk doesn't need Akonadi to be running and Akonadi doesn't need Nepomuk running either. They are independent but if both are running, Nepomuk is served by Akonadi to cache email tags to include them in user searches. May be the implementation of both of them is not the best, but it has been improving all along the development cycles. Developing Baloo is an example. Keep in mind that Nepomuk wasn't wasted because, according to the developer, many of the ideas and code in Baloo came from Nepomuk. That is what usually happens in development cycles. You might not see the need for Semantic Search on the Desktop, but others do. I believe the EU thinks it is they way of the future where users will be managing correlated information more than files and directories and that is the reason they must have spent so much money. Didn't Google's search engine, the most famous and probably the fastest now a days, come from a academic project? We did beat this dead horse before and now we are doing it again, I will not have a third round. |
| Ridcully Feb 19, 2014 5:28 PM EDT |
Quoting:No you didn't say it @Ridcully, but when you demand removing Nepomuk & Akonadi to index & tag user mail, it is just like saying removing semantic search. that is taking choice from users who want it and need it. @Fettoosh.......I am now seriously annoyed. I have never in all my writing "demanded removing Nepomuk and Akonadi". Find me one place in the three articles where I have written this please, or used the word "demand" in the context you have indicated. I am sure you cannot, so please would you cease attributing things to me that have never happened. It comes very close to libel. All I have ever said is that if the user does not want Akonadi and Nepomuk, then this is how you remove them, if that is his/her choice....but if you do, it has other effects which will have to be addressed. That sums it up. I have never demanded anything....simply shown others how their choices can be put into operation. KDE developers changed the functionality of KMail and the KDEPIM.......by so doing, they removed choice from those who did not want the semantic desktop. The KDE team have produced a "one pattern size fits all" result and this is simply not good enough as far as I am concerned. You know already that I consider that KDE is an excellent DM. My concern is simply that its development direction is now disadvantaging users who don't want the semantic desktop and who cannot get rid of it without being further disadvantaged. But what they do is their choice and decision..... Update @Fettoosh. I have now searched all three articles, Parts 1 & 2 plus the KMail article and searched on the word "demand". Here is what I found: Part 1........no use of the word. Part 2.........I used those letters once in the phrase: "mean that for an individual user who has no need of such a complex and demanding desktop, the current versions of KDE4 may not be the best solutions for his/her computing requirements. " KMail article. The word was used on two occasions: a. "Browsing is done with Chrome or Firefox as the occasion demands," b. "unless I used the "open KWallet" method described above, the browsers were beginning to demand passwords from KWallet at various points of operation" There is absolutely no evidence of any kind for your statement that I have put in the quote above. Well ? |
| Scott_Ruecker Feb 20, 2014 12:44 AM EDT |
Tony's research and how he was able to explain what it is that is going on so even the layman such as myself understand are amazing. These two articles together are a treatise into what could be done better by the KDE team, by any team. There is no reason why any user should have to go through what he did to get something rather simple to work the way he wants it too..call me crazy but it shouldn't be that hard. I posted this in the other thread related to this article. |
| Fettoosh Feb 20, 2014 1:13 PM EDT |
Quoting:I am now seriously annoyed. I have never in all my writing "demanded removing Nepomuk and Akonadi" @Ridcully, Never meant to annoy you, but you insisted on splitting/removing/disabling Akonodi and I took it the wrong way. Sorry about that. Disabling Akonadi might not be a viable option, at least not at this point, because its introduction made the integration of all parts that constitute PIM possible. I believe KDE Dev, didn't want to deal with this issue because they have bigger fish to fry. I believe Semantic search was very important to them for multiple reason. It gives them advantage over others, like MS & Apple as cited by Carla, it is furnishing them needed funding, etc... May be they will revisit it at some point in the future just like they always did with other apps. Take the KDE structure and framework, many complained initially and for various reasons, but now everything is going better and users are coming back in droves as we see from various polls. Look at what they are doing with KDE core libraries, they are huge and now they are breaking them up to smaller and smaller libraries for better performance, portability, and to reduce dependency. Look at the Plasma Active for Tablets. They are facing the challenge brought by small portable devices and trying to adapt and accommodate to the needs of their users that are constantly growing in number. PIM is very important since it will mostly be used on portable devices to access and consume information. Quoting:they removed choice from those who did not want the semantic desktop. The KDE team have produced a "one pattern size fits all" result and this is simply not good enough as far as I am concerned. I repeat, KMail/Akonadi for for the sake of PIM package does not depend on Semantic Desktop Search (SDS) (Nepomuk). SDS can easily and totally be turned off. The choice is still there. What I am trying to say is that, you are insisting on requesting for something that is, at least for now, not in tune with the grand plan the developers have set out to venture into the future. We never know if they would backtrack and do what you are requesting. But it is all obvious that their prioritise are where their hearts are and funding are coming from. You certainly can choose to use whatever you like, it is everyone's prerogative. I recently tried KMail/Akonadi and I find it very good & pleasant to use even on my low resources Netbook. |
| jdixon Feb 20, 2014 3:58 PM EDT |
> What I am trying to say is that, you are insisting on requesting for something that is, at least for now, not in tune with the grand plan the developers have set out to venture into the future. What he has "insisted on requesting"is something that meets his needs. What the developers have insisted on providing does not. As for it not being in tune with their grand plan, we figured that out quite a while ago. |
| Ridcully Feb 20, 2014 6:40 PM EDT |
@Fettoosh.....Okay and understood. But what you are indicating is that you and I see the "semantic desktop" in two different ways. To you, the semantic desktop is just Nepomuk and I'd immediately agree that this concept is the correct "theoretical viewpoint". Conversely, I take a "practical viewpoint" and in actual operations of the computer, your theoretical view of the "semantic desktop" is partially wrong. As I now understand the complex structures that the KDE4 team have put together, Akonadi is not part of the "semantic desktop", sensu stricto but is indispensable to it and has to run if the rest of the "semantic desktop" is to function. In your sense, Nepomuk is, by definition, the software that enables the "semantic desktop"...but to me, Nepomuk will not function without the additional layer of data supplied by Akonadi. Therefore, Akonadi has as much right to be considered a part of the "structures of the semantic desktop" as Nepomuk has. This refusal to accept that "Akonadi is just as much a part of the problem" is extremely worrying to me. Let me be very clear, the KDEPIM package (of KMail, Kontact, KAdressbook, Kalendar) will NOT, repeat, will NOT function unless Akonadi is present and active. Try it for yourself by checking out the procedure that I have given towards the end of Part 1. It's only a temporary thing and you can readily restore Akonadi to active if you wish. However, if you use the "akonadisrrc" file in .config/akonadi to disable Akonadi by setting the startup line to false, then all members of the KDEPIM package are disabled and will tell you so with a large red cross and a line of text. Akonadi is part of the practical view of the "semantic desktop problem" and the indisputable facts I have just stated prove it. No matter how you cut it, a piece of software that is constantly running as it updates/monitors/responds to requests from other software must/will place a load on the CPU and other parts of a computer system. Akonadi is no exception and many, many users have found that computer processes improve when Akonadi is turned off. To them, Akonadi is just as much a "semantic desktop" problem as Nepomuk is, but you and enthusiasts refuse to see past the fact that Nepomuk is supposed by you to be the sole item involved in the "semantic desktop". Many Linux enthusiasts rejoice in the fact that they are able to use "older machines" with far less computing power than is demanded by, say, Windows 7 (or Windows 8, if we want to consider another Vista style package). Where a Windows machine will simply refuse to even start, a Linux system will run happily.....However the demands of the semantic package on these older machines will not be happily accepted by them. In that sense too, the direction of KDE4 is running parallel with Windows: it requires more and more computer power to operate. I personally do NOT like this at all. I repeat, the problem is simply this: To remove ALL, repeat, ALL operational aspects of the software that is used to run or support the "semantic desktop", both Akonadi and Nepomuk must be disabled. There is no other option. The resulting improvement in computer operations when both are stopped from operating is now too widely documented and confirmed to be rejected out of hand......Disabling Nepomuk will NOT disable the KDEPIM - we both agree firmly on that; but disabling Akonadi DOES !! Whether a user disables both is THEIR choice, not mine !! My view is that it is totally up to them as to what they do. I only give the options that they can choose and I cannot and do not have the right to tell them to do one thing or another. The set of users that want to disable Akonadi is large, but the moment they exercise that choice, they lose KDEPIM and its operations. That is confirmed again and again.....and also by my own research. The reason is very simple: the KDEPIM has been disabled from exercising what was its normal Unix file operations; the KDEPIM can only now function "through" the Akonadi sql data cache. So......if that is the case, then after disabling both Nepomuk and Akonadi, this set of users has three options: install other software to do the job of KMail and the rest of the PIM (and I discussed the method of replacing KMail with Thunderbird in Part2), ....OR, they find a suitable package of KDEPIM that has NOT been altered by the semantic desktop requirements (as noted in Part 2, Pali site plus link)...OR.....they reject KDE4 completely and move to a DM in which the "semantic desktop structures" have never been implemented, and that strongly suggests the Trinity Desktop which has KDE3.5 in its ancestry as the last KDE desktop which was extremely fast and light on computer resources. But Xfce is looking more and more like an excellent alternative too. Now......I hope that helps. Note that I am NOT saying KDE4 is not a good DM. It's very good indeed, but its development path has taken it in the direction that the EU grant obviously wanted: a DM that is designed to run on large networks with powerful servers. (Read the Nepomuk site - it confirms this very nicely - the relevant link is in Part2.) Hey !! Great idea, excellent for Munich, French police, .....you name it, if it's got a large network and associated servers, KDE4 is right in there with the best of them !! Rah, Rah !! But by so doing, the "little person" has been put to one side ....in my view. If he or she can manage to use KDE4 in some way, fine, but complaints will not be noted. "Go use something else that better fits your needs" is the unspoken but implicit response I see coming from the KDE4 cathedral. Viewed in that light, this is very, very sad to me......but it's my view and feel free to disagree as much as you like. Top of the mornin' to you. :-) Post Script........I seriously begin to wonder how long openSUSE will continue to give unbridled support to KDE4 as the only version of KDE that can be used by the "individual user". openSUSE remains one of the best distributions in my books and it supports both individual and networked users with ease. I am beginning to read the oracles and I think that there would be very considerable support for a Trinity option to be placed into openSUSE alongside KDE4 in the desktop options with which you can install openSUSE.....Then you cater fully for the small user as well as the large scale networks.......Just a very serious thought. |
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