[rant] Giving up on Kmail 2 [update: slowly coming back]

[blakedude]

I dumped the KDE desktop a while ago, and have been using LXDE,which is very basic but doesn't have those 5-second delays that KDE would throw at me.

I still use KMail, but as of today it's gone, and I'll migrate to Thunder-turd, which I've used but I don't like.

The KDE apps I like but aren't yet destroyed (like kmail was destroyed)

okular
konsole
kompare

I think I can find suitable replacements for konsole and kompare, but okular is a really great pdf viewer, so I'll keep some of KDE on my machine until there's a replacement.

Somebody should write an article or book on what went wrong with KDE. Smart people + smart plans = disaster!

[sam_i_am]

It is important to acknowledge progress as well as rant against ill conceived/poorly executed ideas. On that note, I would like to report that kmail has become usable again (after applying a patch myself).

Much more importantly, akonadi-google rocks. I have been waiting for this as I really wanted to have my appointments on my Android G1 (old, I know). I didn't want to ditch korganizer completely as it has a much nicer UI than the web based Google calendar. Now I can have both and create entries on Google calendar using korganizer. All my google contacts are now available on kaddressbook as well. So, this is all I want.

While akonadi is still an abhorrence and a memory/cpu hog and I absolutely don't want the (mis)features offered by it, I can tolerate it.

At office I will still keep kdepim 4.6 for anyther cycle. But, at home, I'm now using the stable kde 4.7.3. Thank you very much for Andreas and other Gentoo KDE developers for giving me the choice.
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Sam

[rumcho]

I upgraded to kmail 4.7.3 and came to find out that the client has zero emails in it. How is that possible? Well, turns out kmail is now looking for mail elsewhere, not ~/Mail.
Fine, I go about importing mail into a new directory ~/mail and after 30 minutes of importing I go look into ~/mail and except for directories new, cur and tmp there's nothing else. It turns out kmail is storing mail in some god-forsaken location at ~/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/. I was like WTF? The directory is not even a maildir directory.
I'm rolling back to kmail 4.4.11 until this gets fixed. There's no way I'll trust some thing called akonadi to store my messages in some location that's not even maildir format. Besides, how do I explain to Mutt that now it has to read from some other place and it's not even maildir-formatted.

[Yamakuzure]

No, rumcho.

It saves them in a hidden folder structure. Do an "ls -a" and have a look. The akonadi folder you mentioned is a cache for displaying mail bodies and only temporary. (Well, should be)

[MickKi]

[MickKi]

Another bone of contention ...

Duplicate messages on the POP3 account (gmail). This is how it happened:

4 new messages arrive.

I double click on one to open it in a new window and read it. Close it and read the second. As if by magic the first message duplicates itself.

I delete the duplicate.

As if by more magic another duplicate appears ...

To cut the long story short, by the time I closed kmail there were 17 deleted messages in the Trash folder ...

I emptied the Trash folder, resynced the lot for umpteen time, closed kmail and went to bed in a foul mood.

This morning I start up kmail and look here! All deleted messages and duplicates are still in my POP3 Inbox (local folder). This is ridiculous ...

<start of rant>
Clearly my kmail is not functioning even as alpha software should. Duplicates that recreate themselves, deleted messages that reappear, IMAP Inbox messages that never show up, delays while akonadi/nepomuk do their thang. This is not a mail client but a big bad joke!

I seriously wish that the KDE devs sat down and thought this through, instead of rushing headlong into what seems like a wet dream of someone who's suffering with OCD and hyperactivity disorder combined into one, on an acid trip! Continuous release of code that breaks users' business critical systems , for the sake of functionality that only *some* would appreciate, is *not* what progress is about. The feature of desktop search, tagging and integration of information is fine, but only for those who need it. The rest of us can still use find and egrep, while we enjoy a reliable mail function - which is what *really* matters to many of us!

Fine, add semantic databases and what not if you want to - but can you please give us an option of switching the darn things off? Even better, instead of hardcoding them, can we please have a couple of USE flags that will make sure we do not install all this bloat in the first place? Can't we have a KDEPIM-lite as KDE-3.5 used to be?

I really like kmail and have been using for more than 7-8 years now, but this has brought me to the brink. When the KDE semantic desktop mess and associated crashes first hit the main tree I thought it was time to look at other clients and kiss kmail goodbye. Having done the rounds on claws, T'bird, mutt, etc I eventually came back to kmail. That's because my productivity would plummet every time I tried to use another mail client. Given the <aheam!> negative experience I've had so far and the time I've spent trying to fix this mess I'll keep KDEPIM away from all other boxen of mine. If KDEPIM improves to the point of becoming usable again then I'll probably return to it.

For now I think that my precious time will be better spent in learning how to configure and use mutt, because this rather traumatic KDEPIM experience has pushed me away from all this GUIfied bloat. I have a feeling that I will soon be using mutt for good.
<end of rant>
_________________
Regards,
Mick

[epsilon72]

kmail2 (4.7.3) for me is a complete disaster. Crashes, duplicate messages, addressbook not working properly, etc. I'll stick to thunderbird.

[szensz-siempre]

I too have been having Kmail turn my hair grey - mostly by duplicating my emails, and freezing every now and then as it retrieves the folder contents. I see that this is an issue that has been on various forum sites for a number of years now so I am loosing hope in a speedy resolution.

I would drop the whole KDE PIM suite if it weren't that a lot of dates and information that are very important to me (birthdays, meetings, etc) are still floating around somewhere, although the only way I can see them is through clicking the date/time plasma app on the main panel (see: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-909034-highlight-.html).

Besides these major headaches I am happy with my experience in KDE and would like to congratulate the gentoo devs for their hard work.

[genstorm]

kde-pim suite 4.8.49.9999 status report: Pretty much OK now. Akonadi error messages have gone at last.
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backend.cpp:92:2: warning: #warning TODO - this error message is about as useful as a cooling unit in the arctic