Re: [gentoo-user] What is the point of baloo?

[Michael <confabulate@kintzios.com>]

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On Sunday, 17 September 2023 18:53:33 BST Mark Knecht wrote:
> On Sun, Sep 17, 2023 at 10:46 AM Wols Lists <antlists@youngman.org.uk>
> 
> wrote:
> > It always annoys me, but baloo seems to be being an absolute nightmare
> > at the moment.
> > 
> > Iirc, it's "the file indexer for KDE" - in other words it knackers your
> > response time reading all the files, wastes disk space building an
> > index, and all for what?
> > 
> > So that programs you never use can a bit faster? What the hell is the
> > point of shaving 10% of a run time of no seconds at all?
> > 
> > I tried to kill it and it appears to have just restarted. Is there a use
> > flag I can use to just get rid of it completely?
> > 
> > What I find really frustrating is it claims to have been "built for
> > speed". If it's streaming the contents of disk into ram so it can index
> > it, it's going to completely knacker your system response whatever
> > (especially if a program I WANT running is trying to do the same thing!)
> > 
> > Cheers,
> > Wol
> 
> In KDE System Settings search for baloo, select file search and turn off
> indexing?
> 
> I turned it off years ago due to this sort of issue, as well as others.
> 
> sudo updatedb and locate are my friends. Very fast, zero overhead as best I
> can tell

balooctl status
balooctl disable

and if you want to get rid of the existing indexed database, then:

balooctl purge

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.

Once you disable it, its status will show:

$ balooctl status
Baloo is currently disabled. To enable, please run balooctl enable

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