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KDE4 Tip: Turning Off Annoying Dynamic Systray Notifications
I'm running KDE 4.6.5 on Linux Mint. It's very configurable and at last I am warming up to it. There was one odd behavior that was driving me nuts-- the Nepomuk icon in the systray would appear and disappear frequently as the Strigi indexing service started and stopped, and every time it changed it moved all the icons in the systray and the panel. So the little buggers were hopping all over the place. This is distracting, and almost as annoying as the dynamically-resizing icons in Dolphin in the Places view. But unlike Dolphin, we have a measure of control over this behavior. Right-click in the Systray, then left-click the Display icon. In the Shown Item Categories un-check System Services. Now your systray will stay nice and calm and not go all hippity-hoppity as Nepomuk, or any system service, starts and stops. The downside is the Nepomuk icon will not appear at all, so you lose a fast shortcut to its settings dialog. But it disappears when it's not running, so that's more like a game of whack-a-mole anyway. |
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Comments (17)
How about a simple "chmod -x /usr/bin/*nepomuk*" and then kill them off?
The only drawback I know of is that an update will restore the execute bits, so you have to turn them off again.
The only drawback I know of is that an update will restore the execute bits, so you have to turn them off again.
Nepomuk is more than just a bloaty file indexer. It's the only working implementation of a semantic desktop, which sounds like a horrid buzzphrase, but it's the next generation of cataloguing data. Not just filenames and plain text searches, but image and audio files, calendar and PIM data, finding relationships between arbitary chunks of information, and trying to sort and organize information the same way we do in our brains. I'll have a piece on Linux.com in the next few days that goes into more detail. No, you don't have to love it :) Just trying to explain that it goes beyond old-fashioned search tools, and it's one more way that Linux is leading poor old stuckinruts Mac and Windows.
If they could set it up to work like setiathome, i.e. to use resources only when the machine is idle and to suspend what it's doing when the desktop is being used, it would be an asset. But for any annoying program that thrashes your system while you're trying to watch a movie, or play an online 3D FPS, the only answer is instant death.
SMP (not that stupid hyper-threading claptrap, the real multi-processor deal) is a big help in this area. Even if one processor hog wants CPU time, another CPU can do a lot of lifting for other running programs.
Quoting:SMP (not that stupid hyper-threading claptrap, the real multi-processor deal) ....
Yes it does indeed make a huge difference.
Actually Neopmuk & Strigi was one of the major reasons I moved away from KDE4 as Grish says "absolutely unnecessary".
@Koriel: Unlike Gnome where you're basically required to do whatever the devs want, in KDE the option is there to simply turn if off if you don't want it (which I don't), so I don't see why you'd abandon KDE just because of that. Personally, I think they wasted too many resources on it, but still, like everything else in KDE, things are highly configurable, so if you don't like something the way it comes by default, you can change it with a few mouse clicks. That to me makes KDE much better than most of the alternatives. Sure, they throw everything plus the kitchen sink in there, but things like this you can deactivate, and you can configure it to look largely however you want. It's a totally different philosophy from Gnome, for instance, where they want everyone's desktop to look the same and for you to do things the way they think you should do them.
I don't understand. I don't even have it installed (I'm using Debian's KDE4). Can't you just remove it from the system without removing the rest of KDE?
@Grish
It wasn't just that alone, it was just another nail, those nails accumulate.
I'm seriously waiting for someone to create KDE4 Lite with the crap removed as I do like the desktop interface and plasma but the resource consumption was just way to much.
I believe in starting minimal then adding extras if you need them, not the give them everything including the sink approach and then they can get rid of them later.
I'm seriously waiting for someone to create KDE4 Lite with the crap removed as I do like the desktop interface and plasma but the resource consumption was just way to much.
I believe in starting minimal then adding extras if you need them, not the give them everything including the sink approach and then they can get rid of them later.
>>I'm seriously waiting for someone to create KDE4 Lite with the crap removed
>>I believe in starting minimal then adding extras if you need them
I use this one, and despite trying one or 2 others per month, I keep coming back to it.
http://distrib-coffee.ipsl.jussieu.fr/pub/linux/pclinuxos/li...
>>I believe in starting minimal then adding extras if you need them
I use this one, and despite trying one or 2 others per month, I keep coming back to it.
http://distrib-coffee.ipsl.jussieu.fr/pub/linux/pclinuxos/li...
Quoting:I'm seriously waiting for someone to create KDE4 Lite with the crap removed as ...
That crap you speak of might be someone else's treasure. :-)
For new users, it is better to have everything but the kitchen sink.
It would be easier and more convenient for new users to try software they haven't seen before but already installed for them. Besides, with dpkg/Aptitude, It is easier to remove than to install something.
Having additional applications installed on Linux without having them active does not impact system resources, it just uses a little space that is all. It is not like Windows always afraid to remove something that might render your computer unusable.
Quoting: With Nepomuk and Strigi not running, you won't have any annoying notifications from them, and they also won't be wasting CPU and disk time doing indexing, which is absolutely unnecessary anyway. I never use desktop search, and simply don't see the use for it anyway (that's why we invented directories, after all, to keep information organized), so there's no point wasting system resources with these things.
@Grishnakh, You are making a misjudgment about Nepomuck just as you are misjudging the usefulness of a Tablet Interface.
The way I see it, these two work hand in hand when it comes to information storage and retrieval. Sure, they might not be your cup of tea, but in many areas, they are very practical and effective. If something is not useful to you, it doesn't mean it is not useful or beneficial to someone else. Not beneficial to you means nothing to someone else. You need to stop thinking that the world revolves around you.
Research projects are never useless, even when the results don't turn out as expected. May be a brief intro about Nepomuck would help.
Quoting:
KDE and Nepomuk
In 2006, Mandriva brought Sebastian into Nepomuk, a Social Semantic Desktop project funded primarily by the European Union "to develop a comprehensive solution for extending the personal desktop into a collaboration environment which supports both personal information management [as well as] sharing and exchange across social and organizational relations". This three year project included big players like IBM, SAP, Thales, HP, leading research facilities such as the Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI) and the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), and several universities and smaller companies. It received an investment of €17 million. The project was intended to be primary research and to lay the groundwork for commercial exploitation. Mandriva's role was to create a bridge to the open-source community, primarily KDE. As a result, the KDE Semantic Desktop was born. When the research project ended in December 2008, Sebastian—with Mandriva's financial support—continued his work on the semantic desktop and made KDE-Nepomuk what it is today.
There are a few known implementations of Nepomuk:
a Java variant referred to by the Wikimodel project with its last update in 2008, and the Aperture project also with little current activity; a commercial Software as a Service version (beta) KDE's implementation. Of the three, the KDE implementation has made the most progress toward practical use...in large part thanks to Sebastian’s work and leadership. The KDE implementation is based on the W3C family of specifications for a metadata data model known as RDF (Resource Description Framework) and other industry standards. Thus it is a practical and extensible use of leading edge desktop technologies. Something like Nepomuk has been anticipated since 1945 in "As We May Think", an essay by Vannevar Bush that also predicted technologies such as the personal computer, the Internet and Wikipedia.
Nepomuk is already integrated with some KDE applications. There are many possibilities for extending its use that require more of an R&D approach. With the small Nepomuk team, this is challenging, but it has substantial potential rewards. It supports KDE’s technological leadership. And as free and open source software, it holds promise for endusers beyond KDE. Please see the comments below from several KDE developers.
Desktop search is important to me. And while others may bemoan the fact that the Google Desktop was intrusive and might have had privacy issues, I was vastly disappointed to see Google pull the plug on it. http://tinyurl.com/3ur97ap I have downloaded the last release prior to it being pulled from existence and will install it on our kid's computers for as long as it will work. It gives you the ability to index multiple drives and partitions or even specific folders on those drives and partitions. Indexing isn't too intensive and it happens mostly when the machine is idle.
That being said, I have come to appreciate gnome's native search tool. Just now, I saved this page as an html file and then immediately searched for it by name via gnome search. It found it immediately. No waiting for the next index cycle to pick it up...it was just there.
I am sure that KDE will perfect their search and index offering and I look forward to it, but to my experience, the latest being just last week, it thrashes and stymies even this dual core quad with 8 gigs of RAM. THAT is unacceptable.
That being said, I have come to appreciate gnome's native search tool. Just now, I saved this page as an html file and then immediately searched for it by name via gnome search. It found it immediately. No waiting for the next index cycle to pick it up...it was just there.
I am sure that KDE will perfect their search and index offering and I look forward to it, but to my experience, the latest being just last week, it thrashes and stymies even this dual core quad with 8 gigs of RAM. THAT is unacceptable.
Quoting:No waiting for the next index cycle to pick it up...it was just there.
Excluding bugs and bad code, most people notice severe impact on performance the first time an index is created/initiated. There after it is not that noticeable unless the changes in file system is really sizable, like adding a huge file or number of documents at the same time.
Quoting: I am sure that KDE will perfect their search and index offering and I look forward to it, but to my experience, the latest being just last week, it thrashes and stymies even this dual core quad with 8 gigs of RAM. THAT is unacceptable.
KDE Nepomuk had many bugs initially and really did cause a lot of problems for users. It was a mistake to have it configured to start be default. Semantic indexing and searching is a different beast than standard searching. The latest release is way much better than previous ones.
Like you said, I too believe the KDE team will get it fixed and working.
IIRC, I believe MS was planning to release such a feature with Windows Vista as part of the file system, they changed their plan just before vista was going to be released. The reason was the very severe impact on performance, which made the desktop useless.
Quoting: Semantic indexing and searching is a different beast than standard searching. The latest release is way much better than previous ones.
Like you said, I too believe the KDE team will get it fixed and working.
Yes, I think so too. I have a pretty clear idea of its underpinnings and what it's supposed to do, but I don't understand the user-facing side of it yet. The search dealie in Dolphin seems incomplete, and there isn't a standalone search utility that I can find. But it is still a baby, and it has genuine revolutionary potential. I am continually amazed at the fawning and endless coverage of every new Windows release, when there are no real changes or improvements, just more bloat, malware, and bugs. This is where the action is, not out there in Jabba-land.
@Fettoosh
That cr@p/treasure can be added later that is the whole point of a minimalist DE.
Its like when you buy a laptop their is a whole heap of pre-installed crap which you have to remove no one likes doing that certainly not me and as far as im concerned that goes for DE's as well. I'll stick with XFCE for the moment, its a shame that the few KDE lite projects never came to anything as KDE4 could be really awesome if it was tamed.
That cr@p/treasure can be added later that is the whole point of a minimalist DE.
Its like when you buy a laptop their is a whole heap of pre-installed crap which you have to remove no one likes doing that certainly not me and as far as im concerned that goes for DE's as well. I'll stick with XFCE for the moment, its a shame that the few KDE lite projects never came to anything as KDE4 could be really awesome if it was tamed.
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With Nepomuk and Strigi not running, you won't have any annoying notifications from them, and they also won't be wasting CPU and disk time doing indexing, which is absolutely unnecessary anyway. I never use desktop search, and simply don't see the use for it anyway (that's why we invented directories, after all, to keep information organized), so there's no point wasting system resources with these things.
Here's how to do it: open the K-menu, go to "Computer" and select "System Settings". When that window opens, click on "Desktop Search". In the "Basic Settings" tab that should already be showing, there's a checkbox for "Enable Nepomuk Semantic Desktop". Uncheck it. Click "Apply" and close the window. You're done!
However, this method will leave other notifications enabled, so you'll still see a popup window when Amarok loads a new song, you're about to run out of disk space, KTorrent finishes downloading something, etc. Personally I don't mind these things; they don't happen ofter, and I like to know about them.