[kdepim-users] I want to stay with KDEPIM-2, Akonadi, Baloo (was: Re: Searching in KMail?)

[Gene Heskett]

On Saturday 10 May 2014 06:56:01 Martin Steigerwald did opine
And Gene did reply:
> Am Samstag, 10. Mai 2014, 09:38:08 schrieb Peter Humphrey:
> > On Friday 09 May 2014 22:46:42 cgw993 at aol.com wrote:
> > > I wish they would just focus on making excellent stand alone
> > > applications, that have their own search engines that only work
> > > with that application.
> > 
> > KMail-1 was just like that. Really useful and simple to use, and IMO
> > easily the best MUA around. Since then we've had Progress inflicted
> > on us. If I thought I could go back to KMail-1 I would (this is a
> > Gentoo box), and to blazes with the Brave New World.
> 
> I wouldnآ´t want to go back.
> 
> Granted, there are still performance issues with Akonadi… but it is
> getting better and better. And Baloo just performs outstandingly well
> for me. KMail 1 was nowhere near that search capability. If I started
> searched all my folders with KMail 1 it was basically unusable during
> the search which could last for half and hour or more since when doing
> full text search. As KMail 1 read in all mail files for *each* search,
> instead of building an index in the background. So instead of
> gloryfing the old KMail 1 days and basically forgetting that searching
> large maildirs in KMail 1 was a joke, I suggest you read on.
> 
> With Baloo for me it goes like this:
> 
> I type Alt-F2, type "Brave New World" and got your mail, a reply to
> your mail, a mail from BTRFS mailing list and some more results in a
> fraction of a second!
> 
> No, I donآ´t want to go back. This is just too good to miss out again.
> I want to stay with KDEPIM-2, Akonadi and Baloo.
> 
> And mail address completion works nicely now as well. *Instantly*.
> 
> Baloo is no comparison with Nepomuk. It its faster by factors. 10, 20
> or even more times faster. *Easily*. I have huge respect for Vishesh
> for taking this bold step to replace something he put a lot of effort
> in with something that just works better, by magnitudes. It required
> from him to leave behind something he put a lot of effort into. Thats
> a big decision I have a lot of respect for.
> 
> And added to that: Baloo does part of what you want. It has different
> backends for storing mail and file indexing data. Its not just one big
> super-index for everything. Yes, it is shareable by applications. And
> I am happy that it is.
> 
> The architecture of Akonadi is sound. Using a database as a metadata
> cache for PIM data has been done successfully before with Zimbra,
> Zarafa and other groupware servers. I had a 450000 mail folder with
> Zimbra. And it *just worked*. Including full text search. Zimbra uses
> MySQL as well. Zimbra powers Yahoo mail. It wouldnآ´t, if it wouldnآ´t
> be fast and scalable.
> 
> Databases like MySQL and search indexes like Xapian are *made* for
> workloads like this. The old KMail 1 index files just canآ´t match a
> database.
> 
> Akonadi got good fixes for IMAP last week up to the point it finally
> seems to work okay with a large Exchange IMAP account I use at work
> – and Exchangeآ´s IMAP implementation isnآ´t very good as to what I
> heard from Trojita developer Jan – Trojita also shows slowness with
> Exchange, use Dovecot if you want fast IMAP. I expect a ton more of
> fixes for IMAP now that Munich decided for Kolab and Kontact as its
> groupware, as developers get paid to improve it.
> 
> And with help of David and Sergio I managed to speed up synchronizing
> large locally stored maildirs considerably, making them usable for me
> again – it was sorting filenames alphabetically needlessly which
> didnآ´t work well with more than 245000 unread mails in one folder. I
> will backport this to 4.13.2 if there are no problems with it. So
> there is something in there for POP3 users as well[1].
> 
> Yet, if you want: You are free to put energy into efforts to keep those
> older versions of KDEPIM alive. I wonآ´t.
> 
> I believe in the architecture behind KDEPIM. I see there are lots of
> things to improve upon. I am not yet satisfied with Akonadiآ´s
> parallelism as I can still make it block out the GUI of KMail while it
> is stated design goal of Akonadi that it separates GUI from background
> work. But it is getting there and I believe it has lots of potential
> to build upon. Its potential is certainly not maxed out yet as recent
> developments showed.
> 
> Was it barely usable or even unusable for quite some users during early
> stages of development? I think yes. Does it even now take painfully
> long to mature? I think yes. Was it frustrating to use for a lot of
> users? I think yes. But thats not due to architecture in my eyes. Its
> due to the lack of manpower. So go help. Or have patience and wait, or
> stick to something else in the meanwhile, looking at KDEPIM from time
> to time again.
> 
> I suggest looking at it with KDE SC 4.13.1 with Baloo. I think its
> worth it.
> 
> This is at least my experience.
> 
> Okay, done writing something positive about KDEPIM, Akonadi and Baloo.
> Took me some time, but I thought it was needed.
> 
> 
> [1] [Bug 334218] synchronizations of large folders with filesystem
> contents hogs a Sandybridge core for minutes
> 
> https://bugs.kde.org/334218
> 
> Want to know how long it took me to search this reference again?
> Alt-F2, enter "synchronize mail", done – within fraction of a second
> again. KMail 1 cannot even remotely beat this. It does not even come
> near to this. notmuch might be able to… and you can use it with some
> MUA, if you want, but I prefer KMail as I like its GUI. I have seen no
> mail client with a GUI I like as much and I tried out Icedove and
> Evolution as I had issues with Akonadi and large IMAP at work. KMail
> just is my favorite. Thus I tried to bear with it as much as possible,
> although I admit it was difficult at times and I was near to jump ship
> sometimes.
> 
> Ciao,

I will likely have 14.04.2 LTS on this box in another month or 2, lagging 
long enough that much of the infant mortality of a new release has been 
addressed.  And as long as it can import this corpus of mostly maildir 
folders, I'll be happy if it works as well as you claim.

Can it import what I have?  The new install will be on a different drive, 
and this one will still be mountable.

Are we at the 14.4-1 state yet?

Cheers, Gene
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>
US V Castleman, SCOTUS, Mar 2014 is grounds for Impeaching SCOTUS
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