I’ve discovered Akonadi, a KDE service. As far as I could understand, Akonadi provides “personal information management” and is responsible for some interaction between apps within the KDE ecosystem. To me, it seems to be bloatware. Somebody may use the functions it provides, but I do not. It is just running in background all the time with no use.
- How do I completely disable it forever?
- Have you ever met something else in Linux or it’s ecosystem, that appeared to be bloatware to you (and how did you disable it)?
So what’s the point? A modern and fully integrated de uses background services and those services are required for many pieces to work so much that they have made not that easy to disable the service?
If that’s the point, you are definitely being unreasonable.
On the other hand the service can still be disabled understandably by text file editing to prevent users from breaking their system. I find the lack of an UI setting to disable it a reasonable choice, and yourself are telling me that it’s still removable by user anyway. A power user indeed, but still user manageable.
Plasma user base definitely is not the customize everything people. I think it’s reasonable that akonadi needs deeper user action to be disabled
That service is local only and needed for many apps to work, including stock widgets.
What is your point against akonadi exactly?
I would complain about that search indexer daemon (kglobalaccel or something similar) in plasma that still after years sometimes gobbles up 100% on a CPU core after screen unlock instead … But whatever
Again, this syncing service has nothing to do with providing a graphical environment. Its functionality has a different purpose.
Disabling this particular service can not break the whole desktop environment. It is simply disabling some additional features, that are absolutely not crucial for the system’s operation. As far as I can tell, simply re-enabling this service brings the features back, it is an easily reversible action, so there is no reason to hide it in order to prevent breaking by an unexperienced user.
If you open any article on Linux DEs comparison, KDE Plasma will be mentioned as offering extensible customization.
My point against Akonadi is that it is hard to disable for no serious reason. Whether you use it’s features or not, you get it running in the background, and you don’t have a normal option to manage it.
Thank you for mentioning the indexer daemon, I will investigate if I need it or it is superfluous for me.
I suggest you open a ticket on akonadi or plasma settings to add that option. That would be a good addition I am always for more settings…
But no, plasma is indeed not in the ballpark of highly customizable de. Maybe more than gnome, but the bar is really low
AFAIK, anything more customizable than KDE relies heavy on text configs and scripts. Another level both in customization options and knowledge required. I will come up to that eventually, but for users, who are not ready for such way of configuring, KDE will stay the most customizeable option.