On Sunday, 17 September 2023 20:19:55 BST Jack wrote: > On 9/17/23 15:06, Wols Lists wrote: > > On 17/09/2023 19:37, Michael wrote: > >> However, unlike locate, baloo is meant to index not just file names, > >> but also > >> metadata tags and relationships relevant to files, emails and > >> contacts. Its > >> devs would argue it has a small footprint. So it is meant to > >> be*more* than a > >> simple file name indexer. > > > > But what is the POINT of said index? If there's no point it's just a > > total and complete waste of time and space! > > > > So, far the only point I'm aware of is it is supposed to make kmail > > run faster - an application I've never used. > > While I've also always had KDE indexing turned off, baloo and associated > "stuff" allows searching through all your files (or a configurable > subset) not just mail. It lets you find something you know you have but > forgot where you stashed it. Also, I'm pretty sure that that high load > is only until baloo finishes one complete pass through all the files > it's been told to (or allowed to) index. After that, it only needs to > index new or changed stuff. I also believe there is a way to limit how > much cpu it uses, but I have no idea how, since I (like you and many > others) prefer to limit it to 0. > > You would probably get a better discussion, including at least some > reasonable defense of baloo, posting on discuss.kde.org (their current > forum system.) One recent example I did see there is that baloo (with > appropriate configuration) can let you see height and width of image > files in dolphin (the file manager.) No, I don't have any need for that > either, but I can see some users liking it. > > One thing to keep in mind, I don't think folks like us (Gentoo users in > general) are really the primary target of KDE. I suspect they are > (among other things) trying to produce a system that will attract users > from "that other OS" who may take things like poor performance but full > indexing for granted. > > Jack
Yes, Baloo is meant to facilitate complicated and vague searches for e.g., some pdf or was it a png file file I received perhaps around 2 years ago, from one of my contacts among work associates, which I transferred from my phone to my PC over bluetooth. It will also index objects soon after their creation, rather than wait for some cronjob to kick in once a day. However, if you have no such use case, then it is relatively easy for Gentoo users to disable semantic-desktop and/or disable baloo.
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