[gentoo-user] KDE5 & Disabling search and recent documents & thoughts

[gentoo-user] KDE5 & Disabling search and recent documents & thoughts

[Daniel Frey]

OK

We're in 2016 now. And KDE *still* doesn't make it easy to disable their
damn indexer. I've never wanted to search through my menu, I've never
wanted it to remember every damn file I've opened. It's a personal
preference.

WHY can't we have a single checkbox to disable all this crap? I found
one and it didn't work (search in system settings.) Then when I was
searching around online I found out it will reenable itself magically
randomly anyway!

I also tried balooctl and it didn't work either.

So I got very pissed off at this point and did the following:

$ chmod 444 ~/.kde4/share/apps/RecentDocuments/
$ rm /usr/bin/*baloo*

Rebooted

$ rm -rf ~/.config/baloo*
$ rm -rf ~/.local/share/baloo

Rebooted again

...and FINALLY it stopped indexing and remembering stuff that I told it
not to. It still remembers the last application used, but I don't really
care about that. I've put those commands in a script in /etc/local.d too.

Just figured others might want the info. A note, searching for files
through Dolphin can be affected by this. I never do that myself, I
always use a shell (konsole, etc.)

I've been using and tweaking for a couple hours now and haven't seen any
ill side-effects from my "nuclear" option.

One other gripe on KDE5: it's 2016, why can't we use the meta key to pop
up the menu? Really...

Other than that, things are a bit different. I'm not sure I like the
flat look yet. After the upgrade for some reason the K menu was
invisible, but when I set the theme to Oxygen it was visible again? I
thought that was odd, did anyone else experience that?

Dan

[gentoo-user] Re: KDE5 & Disabling search and recent documents & thoughts

[Michael Palimaka]

Hi Dan,

On 11/04/16 09:55, Daniel Frey wrote:
> OK
> 
> We're in 2016 now. And KDE *still* doesn't make it easy to disable their
> damn indexer. I've never wanted to search through my menu, I've never
> wanted it to remember every damn file I've opened. It's a personal
> preference.
> 
> WHY can't we have a single checkbox to disable all this crap? I found
> one and it didn't work (search in system settings.) Then when I was
> searching around online I found out it will reenable itself magically
> randomly anyway!
> 
> I also tried balooctl and it didn't work either.
> 
> So I got very pissed off at this point and did the following:
> 
> $ chmod 444 ~/.kde4/share/apps/RecentDocuments/
> $ rm /usr/bin/*baloo*
> 
> Rebooted
> 
> $ rm -rf ~/.config/baloo*
> $ rm -rf ~/.local/share/baloo
> 
> Rebooted again
> 
> ...and FINALLY it stopped indexing and remembering stuff that I told it
> not to. It still remembers the last application used, but I don't really
> care about that. I've put those commands in a script in /etc/local.d too.
> 
> Just figured others might want the info. A note, searching for files
> through Dolphin can be affected by this. I never do that myself, I
> always use a shell (konsole, etc.)
> 
> I've been using and tweaking for a couple hours now and haven't seen any
> ill side-effects from my "nuclear" option.

In System Settings -> Search there's options to turn off the file
indexer as well as all the other search plugins (including recent
documents). I've heard that sometimes it can take a little bit for the
indexer to stop, but otherwise it seems to work OK fo rme.

Duncan has some patches floating around if you want to strip baloo out
completely.

> One other gripe on KDE5: it's 2016, why can't we use the meta key to pop
> up the menu? Really...

Not sure the reason why it's not native functionality, but you might try
x11-misc/ksuperkey.

> Other than that, things are a bit different. I'm not sure I like the
> flat look yet. After the upgrade for some reason the K menu was
> invisible, but when I set the theme to Oxygen it was visible again? I
> thought that was odd, did anyone else experience that?

Maybe a botched settings migration?

> 
> Dan
> 
> 

Kind regards,

Michael

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: KDE5 & Disabling search and recent documents & thoughts

[Daniel Frey]

On 04/14/2016 11:26 AM, Michael Palimaka wrote:
> Hi Dan,
> 
> 
> In System Settings -> Search there's options to turn off the file
> indexer as well as all the other search plugins (including recent
> documents). I've heard that sometimes it can take a little bit for the
> indexer to stop, but otherwise it seems to work OK fo rme.

I actually forgot I sent this to the list, I've calmed down now. I got
so mad at one point the whole K desktop looked red :-)

I did try disabling through system settings->search (and I found
balooctl shortly afterward and used that too) but even after multiple
reboots baloo insisted on running and indexing files.

> 
> Duncan has some patches floating around if you want to strip baloo out
> completely.

I actually don't care if it's installed, but it wasn't staying disabled
for me, even after multiple times telling it to.

> 
>> One other gripe on KDE5: it's 2016, why can't we use the meta key to pop
>> up the menu? Really...
> 
> Not sure the reason why it's not native functionality, but you might try
> x11-misc/ksuperkey.

Thanks for that tip! I'll check it out (although I'm back on kde4 now.
More on that below.)

> 
>> Other than that, things are a bit different. I'm not sure I like the
>> flat look yet. After the upgrade for some reason the K menu was
>> invisible, but when I set the theme to Oxygen it was visible again? I
>> thought that was odd, did anyone else experience that?
> 
> Maybe a botched settings migration?

I forgot to emerge the wedge-compatibility layer dev-libs/sni-qt,
figured that out a couple days later.

Last night I reverted back to kde4. Plasma was hanging quite freqently
(on resume, plasma would hang for 1-2 minutes before I could use the
taskbar/K menu. I also couldn't switch using alt+tab - if I pressed it
quickly like I would in kde4 nothing would happen. If I pressed alt+tab,
released tab, and held alt for 3-5 seconds it would work, which was
downright annoying.) I tried disabling the compositor, no luck. Then I
thought this might be because of the way I disabled baloo so I undid it
and remerged it but it made no difference.

I then discovered that functionality was broken in kde5, most notably
Dolphin stayed at the kde4 version (newest versions were keyworded
unstable) which means its integration was all broken.

Shortly after that I found out nouveau was not recommended for nvidia
cards, so I installed the binary driver and went from regular freezing
to downright crashing. Plasma would crash every 2-3 minutes instead of
freezing. :-(

I'm back on nouveau with kde4 and everything is working fine. I will
wait out the upgrade to kde5/plasma & mask it if needed for as long as
possible, it's nowhere near usable for me. I messed with it for 4-5 days
trying to get it to work without crashing and gave up.

Dan

[gentoo-user] Re: KDE5 & Disabling search and recent documents & thoughts

[Daniel Frey]

On 04/10/2016 04:55 PM, Daniel Frey wrote:
> OK
> 
> We're in 2016 now. And KDE *still* doesn't make it easy to disable their
> damn indexer. I've never wanted to search through my menu, I've never
> wanted it to remember every damn file I've opened. It's a personal
> preference.
> 

Just an update - you can actually disable the recent documents menu in
system settings, but it's well hidden, almost like they don't want you
to find it. IMO, privacy settings should be a main icon (maybe under
personalization?) in system settings

system settings-> desktop behaviour -> activities -> privacy tab.

Dan

Re: [gentoo-user] KDE5 & Disabling search and recent documents & thoughts

[Frank Steinmetzger]

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On Sun, Apr 10, 2016 at 04:55:05PM -0700, Daniel Frey wrote:
> OK
> 
> WHY can't we have a single checkbox to disable all this crap? I found
> one and it didn't work (search in system settings.) Then when I was
> searching around online I found out it will reenable itself magically
> randomly anyway!

It's a different kind of search than the one you speak of, but the The "new
classic menu" has become practically unusable by keyboard thanks to its new
built-in search field. :’(
- The search field eats every key stroke except the cursor keys, so there is
  no more way of selecting an item by its first letter. Why a search field
  at all? We have KRunner for that (as long as it isn’t crashing).
- The Favourites and Power options on the left margin are not reachable with
  the keyboard at all.
- In KDE4 I could do Alt+F1 + V + R to put the computer to sleep from the
  "Leave" submenu. Now I must press Alt+F1 + Cursor up + Cursor right + 3 ×
  Cursor down + Enter to achieve the same.

I can’t imagine a feature request for the search to be hideable will be
heard. But just as those poor Windows 10 users do, I keep sticking to KDE,
because all in all, KDE is still the best thing out there. I upgraded my
main PC when KDE4 was removed from the package manager, but I just can’t
bring it over my heart to do the same on the laptop.
KDE4 is just too cozy, even with its few remaining quirks. =)

-- 
Gruß | Greetings | Qapla’
Please do not share anything from, with or about me on any social network.

I consider bowling to be a smashing idea.

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