> I could be wrong but Akonadi's goal seems to be to simplify
> kdepim data storage by using a standard DB engine that "just works"
> instead of custom application-specific and mutually-incompatible
> DB-like code. If it works, everything's fine and we will benefit from
> advanced optimisations of SQL engines.
> And from my own experience it finally works in KDE 4.8.

I understand the goal. Possibly even an admirable one. My resistance is people who receive a couple of emails a day (people who manually start and terminate KMail once or twice a day rather than run the app all day), configure only a few RSS feeds that are fetched only every few hours, configure a dozen or so events in KAlarm, and power down every night rather than let the computer run 24/7, don't need or want that kind of backend management. I appreciate how a backend caching service could help share and manipulate data when the user is an information junkie, but not when the user has no such need. For those users Akonadi is a burden rather than an aide.

Of course, geeks and trolls believe that everybody should buy bleeding edge hardware with gobs of RAM and CPU cycles to waste and just STFU.

With that said, possibly some of the PIM apps, such as Akregator, can be built without Akonadi support. Possibly not.

> NEPOMUK and Strigi don't have the same place, their role is
> to eat CPU cycles and disk bandwith until the user either deactivates
> them or does something useful with them. But kdepim won't depend on
> them.

:)

I once tested not installing the Strigi package. KDE4 would not start. Therefore even when disabled as a service, other apps are now dependent upon the Strigi libraries. When I see that kind of design I have a difficult time arguing against those who claim the environment is bloated.

Once again, for the trolls, this type of discussion is not about whether such technologies are useful. They are useful to certain people --- but not all people. These discussions are about the lack of choice --- unless choice is defined as "Use a different desktop environment and STFU." :)

Darrell