Alien Pastures

My thoughts on Slackware, life and everything

Tag: kde (Page 24 of 28)

Common questions on Akonadi and Nepomuk in KDE PIM 4.8

March 14, 2012 / / 4 Comments

 I am not usually a copy/paste kind of guy but I thought it is good to have the following information visible on this blog instead of “just” being a forum post.

I was triggered by a linuxquestions.org post which pointed to another post on forum.kde.org called “Common questions on Akonadi and Nepomuk in KDE PIM“. The post contains a Q&A between one of the board admins and Christian Mollenkopf. This is its full text, copied verbatim (and reformatted for this post). I hope this helps some people who wonder why their PC is so busy indexing on every boot.

 

Q&A session with Christian Mollenkopf:

Starting from version 4.7, KDE PIM has integrated Nepomuk for many operations such as search, message tagging, and address auto-completion. This post answers some of the common questions related to the state of this integration.

Q. Will email which is encrypted be indexed in any form, or will it be ignored?
A. It will be ignored since the search index is not secure.

Q. Will the indexer attempt to match the contents of my address book against emails?
A. Yes, the extracted contacts should be merged by email address.

Q. What occurs when email is read or deleted using other clients on shared mail boxes (such as IMAP mail boxes)?
A. It’s either removed or re-indexed.

Q. If the IMAP server supports it, does Akonadi use the server’s search capabilities or index it using Nepomuk anyway?
A. The indexer is protocol agnostic, that is, it works regardless of the server type used, be it POP, IMAP, or local mailbox. If a supported item (a message) is in Akonadi, it’s indexed. If it is changed it’s reindexed, and if it is deleted it’s removed from the index. It doesn’t really matter where the item is coming from.

Q. The performance of mail indexing is slow, how can it be improved?
A. There are different ways to achieve that:

  • Index only what you need. Right click on a folder, select Folder Properties, then the Maintenance tab, then “Disable fulltext indexing“: this will disable indexing for that specific folder;
  • Turn off email indexing altogether by unchecking the relevant option in System Settings, Desktop Search (only available from 4.8 and later);
  • Wait until initial indexing has completed. Indexing is completed when the akonadi_nepomuk_feederrc file in your KDEHOME/share/config directory (KDEHOME is usually .kde or .kde4) contains the following:
    [InitialIndexing]
    IndexCompatLevel=3
  • Locate the akonadi_nepomuk_feederrc file and change DisableIdleDetection to true:
    [akonadi_nepomuk_feeder]
    DisableIdleDetection=true

    This will cause the feeder to keep on indexing regardless of idle status, increasing CPU usage significantly but on the long run reducing the time to complete indexing. As a matter of fact, the real performance issue is the initial indexing, as it can take very long (days with large mailboxes), and is restarted if interrupted (i.e. because of a restart, not by sleep-mode or alike). Once initial indexing is over, performance will be significantly better. The KDE PIM developers are aware of this problem and will work on a solution.

Eric

KDE 4.8.1 – the best DE you can get

March 7, 2012 / / 49 Comments

Today saw the announcement of a new chapter in the KDE 4.8 series. I was already very pleased with the point release 4.8.0 – it is amazing how the developers managed to keep their desktop environment stable when transitioning from 4.7 to 4.8. And the first maintenance release 4.8.1 brings us bug fixes and more.

Thanks to the fact that the KDE team makes the sources available to packagers ahead of the public announcement, I am again able to provide you with Slackware KDE 4.8.1 packages on time, and they are up for the taking!

It appears that I finally raised Patrick’s interest in the current generation of KDE. He has built his own set of packages and I received excited reports from him. That is a good sign! Perhaps there will be a nice update to slackware-current in a not-too-distant future.

Please note that my own KDE packages have been compiled on Slackware-current. There has been an incompatible update to slackware-current recently (the glibc package) which will cause run-time errors if you attempt to start these KDE programs in Slackware 13.37. If you consider using KDE 4.8.1 on one of Slackware’s earlier (stable) releases, then you have no other option than to compile packages yourself. I have written down the guidelines in another blog post..

Read the accompanying README file for installation and upgrade instructions!

You will find a lot of additional information about what the new KDE offers in comparison to the old version in Slackware, in my announcement post for KDE 4.8.0  Worth checking out if you had not read it before.

Highlight of this new set of Slackware packages:

  • I have added Calligra 2.4_rc1. Calligra is the continuation or “fork” if you wish of the old KOffice. Near the end of 2010 there was a fall-out between the developers of the various KOffice components, and the majority (everyone except the KWord developer) walked off to start the Calligra fork.  The Calligra office suite is fianlly entering Release Candidate stage, and it is stable enough to use it on a daily basis. Don’t forget to “removepkg koffice”!  Calligra’s technology is already being used on tablets: the MeeGo Office suite has Calligra at its core. There is already support for Plasma Active as well, you will find the “Active” applications in your KDE menu.

The KDE 4.8.1 packages for Slackware-current are available for download from my “ktown” repository and several mirrors (taper is in sync when I post this, the other mirrors will catch up soon):

Have fun! Eric

KDE 4.8.0 arrives

January 25, 2012 / / 97 Comments

The release schedule could have told you in advance – here we have the first installment in the KDE 4.8 series!

The Slackware KDE 4.8.0 packages are ready for your enjoyment..

A good primer on the how and why of the modularization of KDE, resulting in an abundance of smaller packages compared to the big meta packages of Slackware 13.37, please read my earlier post about KDE 4.7.0.

My packages have been compiled on Slackware-current. There has been an incompatible update to slackware-current recently (the glibc package). If you consider using KDE 4.8.0 on one of Slackware’s earlier (stable) releases, then you have no other option than to compile packages yourself. I have written down the guidelines in another blog post..

Read the accompanying README file for installation and upgrade instructions!

Some of the highlights of these KDE packages:

  • Being the first release in the KDE 4.8 series means, there will probably be some bugs to iron out. But, I really can not find anything wrong with this point zero release. It sports a new default background “Ariya” to replace “Horos” of the 4.6 and 4.7 releases. It’s nothing but straight-line geometry, giving the desktop a professional look. The desktop feels fast and snappy, partly thanks to the upgraded Qt 4.8.0 which I added as well, but also thanks to the improvements made to kwin, KDE’s window manager. Enabling the “blur” effect should no longer slow down your desktop.
  • There are a lot of updated dependencies compared to Slackware’s own KDE 4.5.5: PyQt, QScintilla, akonadi, attica, clucene, ebook-tools, hunspell, libdbusmenu-qt, libvncserver, phonon, polkit-qt-1, qt, raptor2, rascal, redland, shared-desktop-ontologies, sip, soprano, strigi, system-config-printer and virtuoso-ose. I really hope Slackware will catch up some day, as it is no fun to maintain so many packages outside of the main Slackware tree.
  • In comparison with my previous KDE 4.7.4 the number of updated dependencies is still rather big because I wanted to offer the best experience: akonadi, attica, hunspell, libatasmart, libvncserver, phonon, phonon-xine, polkit-qt-1, qt, strigi, udisks, and upower have all been brought to their most recent versions. Note that libktorrent is now located in “deps” instead of “kde” directory because it has become a dependency for more than just ktorrent.
  • KDE dpendencies that are not part of Slackware 13.37 at all (yet): grantlee, herqq, libatasmart, libbluedevil, libssh, phonon-gstreamer, phonon-xine, sg3_utils, udisks and upower. Note that I added phonon-gstreamer and phonon-xine only after I had already released KDE 4.7.0 packages because people reported that they no longer had sound. These two packages solve that issue.

Also worth mentioning is some stuff which is not completely new, since I added these to previous releases of KDE 4.7 already (but if you are new to KDE 4.8 this will certainly interest you):

  • You will find some additional useful new applications, which are not part of the KDE core set. They are new, compared to Slackware’s own version of KDE. I already added bluedevil to my 4.6.5 package-set. Bluedevil is the new KDE bluetooth stack with a nice GUI, based on the BlueZ libraries already present in Slackware. And with KDE 4.7.0, I included kplayer, a KDE front-end to MPlayer. With KDE 4.7.2, I added Quanta Plus, which disappeared from KDE4 because that migrated from Qt3 to Qt4. It is now being worked on again, but no longer as a standalone application – instead it is available as a plugin to the Kdevelop Platform. And with KDE 4.7.3, I added a native WICD applet for KDE, called “wicd-kde“. It can replace the GTK based “wicd-client” which is part of the wicd package.
  • I also added oxygen-gtk2 (renamed from “oxygen-gtk” now that there is also a version supporting GTK3). It is not really an application, but a theme engine. It (optionally) makes GTK2 applications visually blend in with KDE’s own Oxygen theme. There is a README in its documentation directory which explains how to enable it.
  • Since KDE 4.7.2, I include a “test” directory. This directory contains NetworkManager, plus some other dependencies, that allows me to create a KDE package for “networkmanagement“. Networkmanagement is an applet plus a kcontrol (i.e. a plugin for KDE’s systemsettings). Use the packages in this “test” directory if you want to switch from WICD to NetworkManager as your basic network management service. The applet plus kcontrol make it quite easy to configure your network in KDE (wired, wireless, vpn, dsl and mobile broadband). No new Gnome libraries had to be added for this (NM itself plus its supporting tools have no dependency on the rest of Gnome). I have added NM installation/configuration instructions to the README. Note that I moved from NM 0.8 (which I had in KDE 4.7) to the newer NM 0.9 because that is what KDE currently supports best.

The KDE 4.8.0 packages for Slackware-current are available for download from my “ktown” repository and several mirrors (taper will probably be in sync when I post this, the other mirrors will have to catch up):

Have fun! Eric

KDE 4.7.4 – last of the 4.7 series

December 8, 2011 / / 55 Comments

The KDE team has already released two betas of the upcoming KDE 4.8, but I am not so much in a hurry. First things first! There is the last update in the 4.7 series, which was released earlier today. The Slackware KDE 4.7.4 packages are ready and you can grab them if you like.

For those who are trying my 4.7 packages for the first time and wonder why the hell am I offering so many packages, please read my earlier post about KDE 4.7.0 which explains more about splitting KDE for Slackware into many more (and smaller) packages.

My packages have been compiled on Slackware-current. Even though several people had reported that previous KDE 4.7 packages worked fine on Slackware 13.37, there has been an incompatible update to slackware-current recently (the glibc package). As a result, these new KDE 4.7.4 packages will only work on slackware-current (64-bit and 32-bit). If you are running Slackware 13.37, then stick to your currently installed version of KDE, or install my 4.6.5 packages (or upgrade your Slackware to -current).

Read the accompanying README file for installation and upgrade instructions!

Some of the highlights of these KDE packages:

  • Since this is the last edition of KDE 4.7, I decided to add updated versions of KDE related packages that I do not usually include: amarok, skanlite, ktorrent. I have no idea when Slackware-current will start moving again, but this set of packages allows you to have a complete, stable and up to date KDE environment for the time to come.
  • There are several updated dependencies compared to Slackware’s own KDE 4.5.5: PyQt, QScintilla, akonadi, attica, clucene, ebook-tools, hunspell, libdbusmenu-qt, phonon, polkit-qt-1, qt, raptor2, rascal, redland, shared-desktop-ontologies, sip, soprano, strigi, system-config-printer and virtuoso-ose.
  • In comparison with my previous KDE 4.7.3 the number of updated dependencies is a much smaller: attica, libktorrent, libmsn, and soprano. Note that libktorrent is now located in “deps” instead of “kde” directory because it has become a dependency for more than just ktorrent.
  • KDE dpendencies that are not part of Slackware 13.37 at all (yet): grantlee, herqq, libatasmart, libbluedevil, libssh, phonon-gstreamer, phonon-xine, sg3_utils and udisks. Note that I added phonon-gstreamer and phonon-xine only after I had already released KDE 4.7.0 packages because people reported that they no longer had sound. These two packages solve that issue.

Also worth mentioning is some stuff which is not completely new, since I added these to previous releases of KDE 4.7 already (but if you are new to KDE 4.7 this will certainly interest you):

  • You will find some additional useful new applications, which are not part of the KDE core set. They are new, compared to Slackware’s own version of KDE. I already added bluedevil to my 4.6.5 package-set. Bluedevil is the new KDE bluetooth stack with a nice GUI, based on the BlueZ libraries already present in Slackware. And with KDE 4.7.0, I included kplayer, a KDE front-end to MPlayer. With KDE 4.7.2, I added Quanta Plus, which disappeared from KDE4 because that migrated from Qt3 to Qt4. It is now being worked on again, but no longer as a standalone application – instead it is available as a plugin to the Kdevelop Platform. And with KDE 4.7.3, I added a native WICD applet for KDE, called “wicd-kde“. It can replace the GTK based “wicd-client” which is part of the wicd package.
  • I also added oxygen-gtk, which is not really an application, but a theme engine. It (optionally) makes GTK applications visually blend in with KDE’s own Oxygen theme. There is a README in its documentation directory which explains how to enable it.
  • Since KDE 4.7.2, I include a “test” directory. This directory contains Networkmanager, plus some other dependencies, that allow to create a KDE package for “networkmanagement” which is an applet plus a kcontrol (i.e. a plugin for KDE’s systemsettings). This test, which sofar has proved to be quite successful, allows you to switch from WICD to NetworkManager as your basic network management service. The applet plus kcontrol make it quite easy to configure your network in KDE (wired, wireless, vpn, dsl and mobile broadband). No new Gnome libraries had to be added for this (NM itself plus its supporting tools have no dependency on the rest of Gnome). I have added NM installation/configuration instructions to the README.

A small aside I want to mention:

There was one bug that has been plaguing me ever since KDE 4.7.0 (and I may have had this occasionally before 4.7 but I cannot remember for certain). The bug seems to be ALSA related, but unsure is whether the fault is with ALSA or with KDE. The “kde deamon (kded4)” crashes every time when I login to KDE. Surely, it will automatically restart but it is ugly. It was still there in KDE 4.7.3 and it is described in these two bug reports:

There is a workaround though. If you disable “KMixD Mixer Service (kmixd)” from being started at logon, the crash does not occur anymore and so far I have not found any lost functionality. My laptop’s hardware volume keys still work, and the KDE mixer applet is still functional. Go to System Settings > Startup and Shutdown > Service Manager, and remove the check in the checkbox for KMix Daemon.

The KDE 4.7.4 packages for Slackware-current are available for download from my “ktown” repository and several mirrors (taper will be in sync when I post this, the other mirrors will have to catch up):

Have fun! Eric

Fixes for LibreOffice in KDE

November 26, 2011 / / 7 Comments

Those of you who use KDE as their desktop environment and also use my LibreOffice packages, will know that there are two major annoyances, related to KDE’s theming engine but ultimately caused by bugs in LibreOffice.

Those annoyances are:

  • Tooltips in LO applications show up as black text on black background, effectively rendering them useless. You can fix that by changing the color of Tooltips in “System Settings > Application Appearance > Colors” and then in the tab called “colors” look for “Tooltip background” and change that to some lighter color. But that changes the behaviour of every tooltip in other applications as well, so this should really be fixed in LibreOffice.
  • When using KDE’s Oxygen window decorations, all LO applications will have a non-functional horizontal scrollbar – you can not grab hold of it or move it left-right with your mouse.

Two patches which I found in OpenSuse were needed to fix both these annoyances. I rebuilt my LibreOffice packages for Slackware after applying them. Get them if you were annoyed by these issues just like me.

Note that the mirror sites also offer rsync access as well as faster download speeds. Only taper.alienbase.nl and alien.slackbook.org are up to date at this moment (because I maintain those myself) but the other mirrors should pick up the updates automatically soon enough.

Eric

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