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

[Michael <confabulate@kintzios.com>]

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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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