<!-- 
.. title: Not getting in the users way
.. slug: not-getting-in-the-users-way
.. date: 2014-04-25 14:33:48 UTC+01:00 
.. tags: desktop, linux, 
.. link: 
.. description: 
.. type: text 
--> 

With KDE 4.13, nepomuk and its associated soprano/virtuoso database and storage frameworks has been replaced by something called 'baloo'. The developers are confident: 'There is no explicit “Enable/Disable” button any more. We would like to promote the use of searching and feel that Baloo should never get in the users way.' As a result, the users have high hopes. Is it possible that we finally get a fast desktop search without excessive consumption of resources?

My ~/ occupies a mere 60 GB, and not even half of that are actually indexable data [which I would expect an intelligent desktop search without any possibility of configuration (!) to detect]. All of these data reside on an SSD with a readout speed of 0.435 GB/s, and I have 16 GB of RAM with an access rate of 1.6 GB/s. I would expect a high-speed indexing algorithm (which baloo is supposed to be) to be able to index my drive in not more than 15 min.

What I (and many others) observe instead is a 100% CPU load (on one core) over an extended period of time with a truly horrendous memory consumption. In my case, I've waited 4 hours in which baloo occupied 6 GB RAM on average, with peaks reaching 14 GB. The index created was finally threatening to become larger than all my files combined.

To switch off that amok-running bear, I actually had to [search the web](https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1407049#p1407049 "search the web"). A cleaning process was started after that, again causing full load on one core for several hours. This process left me with an inactive index of 1 GB size.

WTF is wrong with the KDE developers? If that's their idea how to "not getting in the users' way", I really wonder if my [infinite patience](the-kde4-disaster.html "infinite patience") with them was not just a complete waste of time.

I have two systems running on openbox already. I could imagine having two more.

