KDE Frameworks 5.29 Adds Barcode/QR Generation, Faster Baloo

[phoronix]

Phoronix: KDE Frameworks 5.29 Adds Barcode/QR Generation, Faster Baloo

The KDE community has released KDE Frameworks 5.29 as the newest version of their impressive collection of add-on libraries to complement Qt5...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=KDE-Frameworks-5.29

[chepati]

Just to establish my credentials: I started using GNU/Linux (slackware from 3.5" floppies) in '95. I've been using LFS (Linux From Scratch) since 2000. In '98 I installed KDE beta2. I was a loyal, you may say ardent, KDE fan. I stuck through thick and thin, I believed in their vision. For five or six years I used Konqueror as my default browser and kmail was my favorite email client. I even swallowed down nepomuk when it really messed up kmail. I believed it was a shaky first step in the right direction. I survived KDE SC 4.0/4.1. I lived by KDE and I evangelized in its name.

However, back in April 2016 I had enough with all the baloo crap. KDE devs presumed to know better than I how I should use my desktop. All this BS about indexing my files, all my emails, social network stuff (I don't use *any* social network). Why couldn't they just add a simple option: opt out of baloo and all the indexing nonsense. No, instead they doubled down and made it such an integral part of the desktop that you could no longer pick and choose what apps to use. You either got it all or nothing. Well, I chose the "nothing". I compiled XFCE, configured it to my liking and haven't looked back ever since.

I feel that the major desktop environments: KDE, GNOME3, UNITY are all going in a Windowsy, OSX-ish direction of making it appealing to average users and leaving powerusers by the wayside. I applaud their efforts to make Linux more user-friendly and approachable, but this should not come at the expense of the ability to customize and disable features you don't use.

I haven't completely closed the page on KDE. If they come to their senses, I will come back.

[geearf]

You can disable baloo/nepomuk, maybe not in the ui though.

[FireBurn]

You can disable baloo/nepomuk, maybe not in the ui though.

On gentoo you can compile plasma 5 without the "semantic desktop" which is overkill for my needs

[bug77]

On gentoo you can compile plasma 5 without the "semantic desktop" which is overkill for my needs

It's not overkill, just look at what it enables for Plasma search. But it can be painful for a system that has HDDs installed (and probably in other scenarios that don't cross my mind atm) so a on/off toggle is a no-brainer. And when you skip on features people expect to get by default, you should expect a strong backlash.
And this is all disregarding the initial days of Nepomuk and the Nepomuk->Baloo transition.

[geearf]

On gentoo you can compile plasma 5 without the "semantic desktop" which is overkill for my needs

The idea seemed nice, but since the performance was horrendous, I'm too used to disable it to retry...

[M@GOid]

To disable Baloo, isn't jut a matter of uncheck the "Activate file search" in the settings?

[starshipeleven]

To disable Baloo, isn't jut a matter of uncheck the "Activate file search" in the settings?

this.

[bug77]

To disable Baloo, isn't jut a matter of uncheck the "Activate file search" in the settings?

Yeah, the online documentation seems to be out of date, but that should do the trick. Not sure if it covers email indexing or if it actually stops the service, but it should work for the most part.

[cj.wijtmans]

Baloo is slows down the desktop even with SSD. Especially when you get random bugs that lock the system up. It happens with windows file indexer as well.