This is a guest post by Raymond “tittiatcoke” Wooninck, with contributions from myself and Hrvoje “shumski” Senjan

In the next hours the KDE:Current repository will publish the latest release from KDE (4.13). As that this release comes with a big change (the new semantic search), we would like some simple steps in order to perform the right upgrade.

Before the upgrade

In order to migrate data automatically from the Nepomuk store to the new format, you will need Nepomuk up and running, and just for the time needed for the migration. Ensure that Nepomuk is running before the update (in System Settings > Desktop Search). This is only necessary in case Nepomuk is in use on the system.

The upgrade itself

If you are already using KDE:Current then the upgrade should be a simple zypper up or upgrade packages through YaST Software Management.

If you are not yet using KDE:Current, then please follow the instructions on the wiki on how to add the necessary repositories. After adding them, a zypper dup is required to ensure that all the KDE packages are coming from KDE:Current.

Please do not remove nepomuk, as that otherwise the migration to baloo will fail. Also after the upgrade please make sure that the baloo-file package is installed (it is required for indexing). After this check, log off and back on. The Nepomuk migrator will then run and move all the data that can be migrated to the new system. It will also turn off Nepomuk at the end of the migration.

At this moment it would be safe to remove the nepomuk related packages like nepomuk-core, libnepomukwidgets, soprano*, strigi, virtuoso and shared-desktop-ontologies. There are only a few packages left that are stillrequiring the Nepomuk framework (like bangarang, kweshtunotes, etc).

Using the new search system

Unlike the ‘include folders to be indexed’ used with Nepomuk, the new search backend prefers to index everything and exclude unwanted folders explicitly. With the standard setup, all files and directories below the home-directory will be indexed. All other

filesystems are indicated as omitted.

This can be changed by deleting the respective entries in System Settings. To turn indexing off completely, add your home directory to the excluded folder list (bear in mind that this will prevent search from working). To remove the components completely, remove the baloo-file package. The package baloo-pim (only present when kdepim is installed) can be removed if no search capabilities are required for KMail.

Aside from Dolphin, the only search UI available is the package called

milou. Milou can be placed in the panel for easy access and its usage is quite simple. The search term is indicated and search results are shown for files, emails, and so on. You can pick which categories to use in the settings. At the moment you should not put Milou in the system tray, because it will cause Plasma to crash at login.

Tags in the files are now stored using extended attributes (xattrs) instead that in the database.

Known issues

The initial indexing can be heavy on I/O especially if there are large text files: either wait till the indexing is complete (this step is done only once), or exclude the folder containing such files.

Some data will be lost during the migration: in particular, emails will have to be re-indexed, and file<->activity associations, if used, will not be preserved.

Reporting problems

As usual, use Novell’s Bugzilla if you find issues pertaining to the specific packaging used in openSUSE: otherwise, report bugs directly to KDE.