As I found out after looking into the /ec/xdg/autostart folder - the following settings are used to start the baloo file daemon in the background no matter what DE is used. > X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=true > OnlyShowIn=KDE;GNOME;Unity;XFCE This is unnecessarily intrusive behaviour. Users installing another desktop environment alongside KDE will have a distorted experience (like performance issues - Gnome for example has it's own background service for indexing!). Since there are now additional background processes running which have no function within their DE. Please change the configuration defaults to something like: > X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=false > OnlyShowIn=KDE thx, piedro Reproducible: Always
Yes, please. For the same reason, GNOME's indexing service does not run in KDE. You could enable it manually pretty easily if you wanted.
Well, bug reporting works great! SO: I have a simple solution. I want to commit my solution to the developer. It's changing two lines in the default xdg desktop start configuration file: Change > X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=true > OnlyShowIn=KDE;GNOME;Unity;XFCE to > X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=false > OnlyShowIn=KDE Now the solution is nonintrusive, noncontroversial and very, very simple to accomplish taking any developer on this less than 30 seconds. Why is there no comment nor change on the described behaviour here? Or if it is changed already, please would someone mark this as solved? What uis going on - does the KDE development community want user participation or not? I don't get it... p.
The baloo daemon tracks files deletions and moves, so it should run regardless of the desktop you use. Additionally, you can run KDE applications even if you did not start the Plasma desktop.
Why isn't it included in the basic GNOME and XFCE installation? The simple fact that the KDE desktop is installed by the administrator as one of many alternative desktop environments should not constitute that every user has to run a service in the background that he or she will never use for anything. And as I stated there is a very easy fix: If someone uses KDE please run it in the background - if someone starts a KDE application that depends on it please run it but if someone doesn't do it simply don't. You know that historically there have been multiple issues with baloo services. Please realize that it is really disrespectful if user A on a multi user system has to troubleshoot problems (or bother the admin) with a bug or a running process that has nothing to do with his or her choice of DE. Also by your logic tracker-miner, zeitgeist or any other indexing service should also run as background process within or underneath KDE. I don't think anyone what think that is a reasonable idea... I really do not understand why you try to defend the status quo: if somebody really is switching beetween DEs on a regular basis it's easy for a power user to add a copy of the *.desktop file to the /.config/autostart folder and add: > X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=true or whatever is needed. For a user only choosing one DE to work with it's very hard to find the problem if one arises (which happened a lot as you surely remember) if he or she has to search for a solution outside the chosen DE. I am glad that finally someone is reacting to my request but simply to reject it because it might be useful to some users is not a very community friendly approach. At least you should admit that the approach to deactivate a service that has been asked to be deactivated even by many KDE users is a very reasonable and constructive request. BTW: if you don't think there is a problem, try to setup a fresh system install Gnome, XFCE and KDE and let tracker and baloo run in the background at the same time... and if you run into performance issues try to find a solution from either one of the dev teams - good luck! Cheers, p.
> Also by your logic tracker-miner, zeitgeist or any other indexing service should also run as background process within or underneath KDE. If I had installed them, and they need to be running to track changes in indexed files made by applications, yes. Nobody rejected this ticket. I was merely giving a rationale for the current status. Of course there is lots to improve about Baloo, but without a maintainer, you have to live with feedback of bug triagers.
"Nobody rejected this ticket." Glad to hear! so thx for that. To your comment about tracker running in KDE: > If I had installed them, and they need to be running to track changes in > indexed files made by applications, yes. I really do not get your logic at all and I am not sure whether you are trolling me or really are convinced by that (if that is even possible). In the hope there is just a msiunderstanding, I try once again: Let's assume family Smith owns a computer and sets it up in the living room. The mother (administrator) installs linux to avoid corporate datamining on her kids. She wants to tailor the desktop to individual needs and teach her kids some computer skills. the setup: - the son uses a simplified GNOME desktop mainly to learn and play simple games - the daughter uses a GNOME with lots of online syncs (Google account) - the mother is just happy with her old school XFCE setup - the father loves the beauty of the plasma desktop (fiddling around a bit) You are saying it is useful, wanted and reasonable behaviour that each and every person has the indexing service of all the other desktop environments running though they will never start the alien DE? So the daughter has the gnome tracker services running, also zeitgeist and while synchronizing her emails and google drive there is also baloo running in the background (which is only useful for her father - but then again, not on her files!)... I feel ridiculous in spelling this out. Even on a pure single user system running background services across DEs only makes sense for users switching the environment on a regular basis. p.
Nothing prevents the kids or the mother from running KDE applications that the father has installed. I know a lot of users that use Gwenview, Digikam, or other applications (that use Baloo) outside of a Plasma session. If the father has indeed prevented it, he could also prevent that the Baloo services are started. Of course I understand your point, and it is unfortunate that - the Linux inotify service can only notify running processes; there is no way to get a list of changed, added, moved, or removed files "the last time I ran", and that - there is no central (cross-desktop) indexing service or database which would avoid the need to run them all.
Still I don't understand: Why not start a service when it is needed? So if someone using gnome and digikam - why not start baloo the moment digikam is started... I still see no use nor necessity to auto-run it on login... - also there are way, way more use cases in which baloo is running in the background and nobody ever uses digikam (or something else needing the backround services) than there are use cases that benefit from a preloaded baloo... So I do not see what exactly prevents you from taking my advice here and only start KDE background services with a KDE session. If someone needs them using LXDE or Gnome just start them if they are needed... Micrsoft does the same with MS Office: they load Office services in the background just in case somebody wants to use it... it has been pointed out many times as a really bad idea causing problems and wasting ressources. Even MS added an option and made the behaviour opt-in instead of opt-out. Please do the same, thx, p.
BTW: please add a possibility to edit one's own comments in this bug forum... p.
> Why not start a service when it is needed? As I said, the Linux kernel can only notify running processes about file changes. If you start the baloo service later, you will miss any changes. You really don't want to run a full rescan on each start to check for changes.
> The simple fact that the KDE desktop is installed by the administrator as one of many alternative desktop environments should not constitute that every user has to run a service in the background that he or she will never use for anything. Users can override system-wide *.desktop files by copying them into the user-specific ~/.config/autostart/ folder. If that isn't working, you can also crash baloo, there are many ways to do it, as you can see from the bug list.
I get it: You guys created a service and you like to see it been used. That is understandable. And since it is technically limited and resources are scarce you prefer to argue for "no changes" instead of looking for a cleaner solution... Also there already is a user-friendly, comprehensible, easy to apply solution in place that can be used by anyone: > Users can override system-wide *.desktop files by copying them into the user- > specific ~/.config/autostart/ folder. > If that isn't working, you can also crash baloo, there are many ways to do it, > as you can see from the bug list. Also there are clear indications and documentations in place to help unsuspepecting GNOME or LXDE users to easily apply these solutions if their desktop might lag with non-GNOME/LXDE background services... I say "Well done, good work KDE team!" for a perceived problem swiftly and thoroughly solved! I am glad for the discussion and suggest to close this bug. Thx, P.
Just to clear an inaccuracy: tracker does start in other non-gnome environments too by default (if yours does not, it's been modified)
@Rex Dieter: That is true and I launched the same discussion with the Gnome community... The choice of DEs is one of the biggest visible and appealing advantages for new linux users (this is my experience but also see the number of posts about choice of distribution/DEs within the communities...). For the spread of linux desktops it is very important imho that it is possible to install and test different desktop environments alongside without any hidden unwanted interactions or disturbances. I advocate this for more than 5 years now: do not let any DE touch the user preferences (default applications, mime types, background services etc.) of any other DE but the experience atm is still discouraging to new users: New user interested in linux (mostly frustrated with windows) wants to check out linux. Installs a distribution and after a quick look installs different DEs alongside planing to decide which one to run after testing the different environments for his or her use case. The initial experience isn't great and looking for answers gets you comments like above "why don't you copy the config files and adjust them to your liking... or just crash a process". Still to this day clicking on a desktop symbol in GNOME suddenly starts dolphin for some reason, a few files within KDE open with gnome apps, Tracker is slowing down KDE but the new user can't find any information on it in KDE docs (obviously!), saving a file in firefox on KDE might open the file picker dialog of nautilus... well, you get the point... In the end the experience with the shiny and brand new linux system isn't promising at all unless you start solving many little problems by deep diving into configuration files, tricks and workarounds... Most new users I had to work with felt discouraged and thought the barrier of entry is too high - it doesn't help to tell them that many problems only arose because of interacting multiple DEs - it's this first impression that counts... Clean concepts and strict separation of DE experiences are important and have more implications than people might think on first glance. BTW I filed the bug with a few other KDE projects, asking to change the entries in the *.desktop files" to prevent auto starting with other DEs - it seems there has been no problems to change it and it is fixed now! thx for reading, p.
I get what you're trying to say, and I agree with the sentiments (so no need to continue repeating yourself, I get it, really). That's nice in theory, but in practice, you seem to have disregarded that bugs will occur (comment #3 ) and that this can be considered an essential part of runtime libraries. That's an important distinction: baloo is part of the kde framework (runtime) libraries, not part of the Plasma Desktop. Even using tracker as an example, if it (or baloo) is not running, then applications that use it and expect it to be present will not function properly.
Well, that's fair enough. Cheers, p.
*** Bug 396940 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Not sure there's anything to be changed here, based on the preceding discussion. Sorry. :)