13 Feb
2012
13 Feb
'12
4:06 a.m.
I could be wrong but Akonadi's goal seems to be to
simplify
kdepim data storage by using a standard DB engine that "just works"
instead of custom application-specific and mutually-incompatible
DB-like code. If it works, everything's fine and we will benefit from
advanced optimisations of SQL engines.
And from my own experience it finally works in KDE 4.8.
I understand the goal. Possibly even an admirable one. My resistance is people who receive
a couple of emails a day (people who manually start and terminate KMail once or twice a
day rather than run the app all day), configure only a few RSS feeds that are fetched only
every few hours, configure a dozen or so events in KAlarm, and power down every night
rather than let the computer run 24/7, don't need or want that kind of backend
management. I appreciate how a backend caching service could help share and manipulate
data when the user is an information junkie, but not when the user has no such need. For
those users Akonadi is a burden rather than an aide.
Of course, geeks and trolls believe that everybody should buy bleeding edge hardware with
gobs of RAM and CPU cycles to waste and just STFU.
With that said, possibly some of the PIM apps, such as Akregator, can be built without
Akonadi support. Possibly not.
NEPOMUK and Strigi don't have the same place,
their role is
to eat CPU cycles and disk bandwith until the user either deactivates
them or does something useful with them. But kdepim won't depend on
them.
:)
I once tested not installing the Strigi package. KDE4 would not start. Therefore even when
disabled as a service, other apps are now dependent upon the Strigi libraries. When I see
that kind of design I have a difficult time arguing against those who claim the
environment is bloated.
Once again, for the trolls, this type of discussion is not about whether such technologies
are useful. They are useful to certain people --- but not all people. These discussions
are about the lack of choice --- unless choice is defined as "Use a different desktop
environment and STFU." :)
Darrell