Re: It could have been very different
Oh Dear Flippin' $Diety ... Akonadi and Nepomuk. [Deletes explicitives.]
Everything you say about it is true. I upgraded to the new Kubuntu LTS that had it baked in by default and my Screaming Machine was sudddenly out of RAM/SWAP and I/O Bound like The Gimp over there.
Note: I too use a directory structure that is comprehensive and has served me more or less for more than two decades.
But Wait! There's More. I used Kontact which now Relied on Akonadi. So attach it to your CalDAV and it will index all those (My CallLg Calender hurts thiings, otherwise sure, why not), and Tasks, And Notes, Contacts was clever and all that worked across a ton of Apps and Widgets... but then when you Start attaching IMAP it indexes EFFING EVERYTHING! (Including but not limited to Everything...metadata in Attachments ... ALL THE THINGS!!!)
I also have a comprehensive IMAP Directory Structure. It really shouldn't be indexed. Now I'm kicking the crap out of my IMAP serrver (mine, fortunately), and chewing up All The Bandwidths (because it would cheerfully hit all your mailboxes at the same time. And if I recall, each Resource Connector had it's very own process that kind of did whatever it wanted whenever it wanted).
I broke a few Starbucks networks in those days just opening my PIM. "Sorry mates, no cat photos for the next few minutes, video is right out."
Oh! And it had it's OWN MySQL server instead of using the one In Chain (bad design decision presumably so they wouldn't actually have to keep up with M/SQLDB and savee them some updates ... first clue something is bad). [Amarok, the cool media player at the time, had the same problem, but IT you could move into a "Real" MySQL/Maria Instance ... why not just install a Real Instance in the first damned place and use it?].
Someone aove said you could kill Clippy with a RegEdit (pun unintended) and that was actually the solution. Saved much sanity and it was like a string and a boolean setting or three. Easy enough.
The HELLSCAPE that was turning off Akonadi and Nepomuk. I had to go back to Thunderbird and dump Kontact just to shed that Resource Murderer.
"sudo apt-get uninstall akonadi" seriously made KDE yell and scream that you were murdering it (hint, the opposite was happening), and the crap version of MySQL griped).
I run Linux so I Don't t have to clean out my New Build. I have to ADD stuff I want. This is The Way.
I hated Akonadi. And I hated all the bugs in Thunderbird over the years (new version works flawlessly for my needs) but persevered because the alternative was worse. Kontact isn't the default PIM anymore because KDE people said, "Uhhhhh, you turned my $4,000USD machine into an abacus, If I wanted that I'd run the latest Windows."
I already used the Gimp Icon, but here's a beer as well my friend.