Re: [gentoo-user] Kmail2 - I have not given up ... yet

[J. Roeleveld]

On Tuesday, December 29, 2015 08:03:25 PM Mick wrote:
> On Tuesday 29 Dec 2015 17:37:25 lee wrote:
> > Are we at the point where users are accepting to have to install and
> > maintain a fully fledged RDBMS just for a single application which
> > doesn't even need a database in the first place?
>
> Yes, a sad state of affairs indeed.  I was hoping for the last 5-6 years
> that someone  who can code would come to their senses with this application
> and agree that not all desktop application use cases require some
> enterprise level database back end architecture, when a few flat data files
> have served most users perfectly fine for years.  I mean, do I *really*
> need a database for less that 60 entries in my address book?!!

I'm no longer convinced a database isn't needed.
Kmail1 was slower than kmail2 is these days.

A mail client will need a database, either it's a collection of emails that 
need to be parsed everytime you open the mailbox or it's stored in a pre-
parsed format somewhere else.
Flatfiles are ok if the amount of data is small, but how do you organize the 
data?
What do you do if you find you need to add an extra field? Or need a larger text 
field to fit the values?

I have over 400 adresses in my addressbook and this is likely to grow.
I also have mailboxes with more than 10,000 messages each. With kmail1 I had 
to split these over multiple just to keep the performance acceptable.
With a database storing all the metadata, I no longer need to keep splitting 
the mailboxes.

> I can stick with Kmail-1 until circumstances force a change upon me, or I
> can try once more to migrate to it now (previous attempts failed for
> various reasons).  The only reason I am having a go at it again during my
> holidays, is because I don't want to have to try a forced migration in the
> middle of some other crisis during a working week.

Usually a good reason to do it during off-days.
The migration is a lot simpler if you have the emails already stored in an 
IMAP server.
I NEVER tried to "migrate" from kmail1 to kmail2. I wiped the entire kmail 
config and set kmail2 up with a clean slate.

> > Quite a few times I've been thinking it would be nice to have a database
> > to implement a particular feature for an application, and I've always
> > decided not to do it because it seems to be a totally unreasonable
> > requirement, and because it seems rather unlikely that any user would be
> > willing to do it.  It would make some sense if an RDBMS were a
> > requirement already, used by all kinds of software --- though I'm
> > finding it very questionable if we should go there (and find ourselves
> > with a single point of failure and bottleneck).
>
> You are wise and evidently not affected by the EU project which funded all
> this semantic KDE desktop PoC exercise, that foisted the akonadi on us as if
> it was the best thing a desktop would ever need ... madness!

I don't use the semantic KDE stuff either, only the kdepim stuff.
I do see where it can be useful. But for that, I'd prefer it to be stored 
centrally to avoid every desktop and laptop to want to built it's own index.

> Perhaps this was Europe's response to the MSWindows desktop monopoly in the
> enterprise sector, but IMHO they started too late and ended up fighting the
> wars of the previous decade.

Perhaps, but it does mean that a Linux desktop is far easier to work with than 
what MS is doing with their desktops.

> > A MUA must be doing something very wrong to have such a requirement.
> > And what kind of performance can you expect with a laptop that has only
> > 4GB and is already overloaded with KDE?
>
> I don't actually run the full KDE desktop.  I run e17 with some KDE apps,
> like Kmail.  Kmail has been and still is the best mail client for my needs
> and habits.

I do run the full KDE desktop.
It does run with 4GB, but it also depends what else you want to use it for.
I tested it not too long ago with 2GB in a VM accessing via VNC.

The biggest problem was the bandwidth requirement for VNC to make it look even 
half decent.

Problems start when you also want to start other applications, like libreoffice 
or firefox.

This is why I don't have anything with less than 8GB and all new 
desktop/laptops need to have at least 16GB to be considered usable.

I looked into 32GB laptops recently as my wife wants that. She decided against 
it when I showed her the prices and size of those.
Guess she needs to wait a little longer.

--
Joost