On Saturday 17 July 2010 19:51:19 lynn wrote:
Do I need these programs to run KDE4? They eat up resources (as shown by 'top'), never seem to stop or use less memory and kmail is much slower on starting than with 11.2.
Short: * You do need Akonadi and Nepomuk for KMail. * However, they are a Good Thing especially if you use PIM apps like KMail, Kontact etc, because they actually reduce memory usage. By splitting off the resources used for PIM data into a separate process, they make them more obvious, which can seem a bit scary. * You can disable the Strigi file indexer without affecting KMail. * The KDE team at openSUSE are on your side, we have configured thing so that out of the box in 11.3 Akonadi does not start up unless needed, and Nepomuk and Strigi are turned off. Long: In the 2.0 <= KDE <= 4.4 days, each program loaded the entire address book, calendars, and more specialised stuff like email, RSS feeds, and IM chat logs into its memory, so memory usage for PIM data increased linearly with the number of PIM apps running. Same goes for non-PIM apps using PIM data (the Kickoff menu's contact search data, Konqueror's Copy To IM Contact feature). Because Kontact is just a shell for KMail, KAddressbook, KOrganizer etc, it caused the same memory multiplication even though it's all one process. With the Akonadi design, only the Akonadi process loads all the data into memory. Each PIM app then displays a portion of that data as it needs it, so the amount of extra resources taken by each extra PIM app is smaller, and the initial amount of memory used by each app is less. It should also provide extra stability, because each app no longer has to maintain its own data storage infrastructure, with all the caching, integrity and performance gotchas that keep computing science graduates employed. Currently, the migration to Akonadi is not yet complete; for example, KMail uses Akonadi for address book data but still uses its old storage for emails, same goes for KOrganizer for calendar data. This probably accounts for the slower startup since 2 systems are in use in parallel. By the way, this design that splits between user interface and session-local data server is not new. Evolution has used it for contacts and calendars *finger in the air* for about 10 years now, and I'm sure some of the longer memories around here can point to other client-server PIM designs. Akonadi extends this design for other types of PIM data and uses a higher performance protocol to connect the two. Nepomuk's role in this picture is to provide search and indexing; for example if you use as-you-type address autocompletion in KMail, this is done by Nepomuk and mail search will also move out there as well. You *can* disable Nepomuk and use KMail but it is not recommended - expect these searches to stop working. Any questions? HTH, Will -- Will Stephenson, KDE Developer, openSUSE Boosters Team SUSE LINUX Products GmbH - Nürnberg - AG Nürnberg - HRB 16746 - GF: Markus Rex -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org