The other day I got a bit fed up of having a “Starting Akonadi server” dialog showing up each time I logged on my KDE4 trunk session, so I decided to investigate what was causing this dialog to appear.
It turned out it was triggered by KRunner. In case you don’t know what KRunner is, it’s the cute little window which comes up when you press Alt+F2.
How can such an innocent window start an Akonadi server? The answer is: KRunner is much more powerful than it looks 
. Notice the little wrench button on the left of the window? This is were the power is hidden. If you
click on it, you will be greeted with a configuration dialog like this:
If you are in the same situation as me when I opened this dialog for the first time, then all “Features” are likely to be checked. The responsible for the Akonadi start up, is the “Contacts” feature. Uncheck it and enjoy a faster login!
More goodness
While we are here, let’s explore this dialog a bit more. There are quite a few interesting features waiting to be discovered.
Calculator
Need to crunch a few numbers, this is probably the fastest way to do it. Enter ‘=’ and type your operation, Calculator will display the results as you type:
Do not forget the leading ‘=’, otherwise it won’t work.
Powerdevil
The Powerdevil feature is neat too: it makes it easy to suspend your computer from the keyboard. Start typing “suspend” and then select in the list on the bottom the suspend mode you wish to enter.
Nitpick: This feature should provide different icons for the different suspend modes. Right now the only way to know which is which is to select one and look up its title below the text entry.
Command Line
Command line is the most common feature, it starts your programs. If you want a light KRunner, you can uncheck all features but this one. You will still be able to start programs, the only thing you will miss is the application icon
and description.
Nitpick: This feature lets you select a few options from its configuration dialog, such as “Run in terminal window” or “Run as a different user”. The problem is these options are the kind of settings you want to set when you run
particular commands. You probably do not want to make them permanent. As a result I think they are quite useless.
It would be more useful to add new keywords, like “run-in-term” or “run-as”. This way when I want to run an app in a terminal I can type “run-in-term”. And to run as a different user: “run-as “.
Even more goodness
The second tab of the config dialog let you choose between “Command oriented” and “Task oriented” user interfaces.
The “Task oriented” interface looks like this:
It’s quite nice and let you easily go through the “run candidates” by pressing the left and right arrow, with a nice animation between them.
It has a few drawbacks though:
- I find the popup list on the right useless and not that nice.
- One needs to press Enter once to select the run candidate, then another time to start it. Pressing Enter once should be enough.
- There is not way to enter text, which makes it impossible to enter command parameters, use the calculator or paste an url.
Final words
KRunner really has more than meet the eyes. With a bit of work to make this raw power more visible, it would be even better. Here are a few ideas:
- The features should have a way to communicate how they work, for example by stating which “words” they provide. This way Powerdevil could tell me it understands various “suspend” words and I could probably figure out how the “Unit Converter” feature works .
This could be done with a master-detail view: selecting a feature could show an info page on the right of the list. - There should be multiple lines of text below the icons so that it’s easier to distinguish between them (it would help Powerdevil for example)
Hmm… I should probably fill some Bugzilla wishes for those.
ok, so where can i get the amarok search? i’m on kubuntu nightly…
I’m with kde 4.1.3 so i don’t know if this is fixed, but for example apps like firefox, skype, gimp and other are not found. E.g. i write “fire” i expect that firefox shows up, but it doesn’t, same thing with “sky” or “gim”, i’ve to write the full name like “firefox” and then it launches it.
(these examples work with the kickoff’s search, but not with krunner)
Is this fixed in kde 4.2?
That’s really cool. But alt+F2 combination causes avoidance of this program. Any chances to integrate Krunner funcionallity with kickoff’s search line? It had some similar functions in 3.5 times. It would be very natural and friendly for novice users.
Unit converter is quite easy to use, like in google in fact :
10 inch in cm
10 km in yard
10 L in oz
or just
“number” “unit”
to convert from any unit to International System of Units (metric system)
@kdmx,
I don’t know if it’s because of 4.1.3 vs. 4.2, but two of those examples work fine for me (firefox and gimp, using KDE 4.1.82). I don’t use skype so can’t give an opinion there. Although I think that, as far as using krunner as an application launcher, as long as the program is available in kickoff krunner should be able to find it.
I use 4.1.3 firefox shows up after typing fire, skype only after typing full app name
Can it be made possible to search for firefox bookmarks?
Thanks for post. Now I know that i don’t need to use Google’s unit converter. But unfortunately KRunner’s seams to be a bit broken.
While some of Strashs examples work others don’t
What works:
10 inch in cm
10 km in yard
What don’t work:
10 L in oz (L must be l, and oz seams to be unknown)
10 cm in inch (this is absolutely strange => bug)
Maybe I should report a bug. Or maybe this is only in 4.1 and fixed for 4.2
@xdmx:
I know on my machine krunner wouldn’t recognize “gim” as “gimp” because its menu entry was actually “GNU Image Manipulation Program.” I changed it to “GIMP” in the menu editor and now it works. Maybe that’s the issue?
I want amarok2 plugin too!
hehe.. loved the blog post. very well (funnily) written.
as for how to improve it, those are both on the roadmap. i was thinking i might have time for those things in 4.2, but i failed =(
here’s looking to 4.3 =)
@JoselB
In OpenSuse 10.3 with KDE 4.1.82:
10 l in fl oz works (volume)
10 g in oz works (weight)
10 cm in inch works
@Dumas: I had the same problem in Kubuntu. IIRC, if you open the Krunner settings, there is something related to the typeahead-search that you can adjust. It fixes the problem. I don’t remember the specifics, but it’s there, and it is fixable
. Try fiddling around with the settings.
As to the blogpost itself…. Is it really a “fix” if we have to disable functionality? It’s a workaround, not a fix. What I would like to see is to get rid of that “Starting Akonadi server” altogether. Why do we have it? We don’t get similar notification about other services either.
KRunner is flexible in taking input and executing a command, but is a bit limited in user feedback – it’s not appropriate to use the same user feedback for every operation.
I blogged some a possible extension to the design:
http://maninalift.blogspot.com/2008/12/krunner-and-new-command-interface.html
Discussion on forum.kde.org:
http://forum.kde.org/enriched-krunner-mockup-t-19390.html#pid26220
All that nice and really usefull functionallity gets obsolete as users don’t know who to use it. i got used to katapults behaviour over time, but since it isn’t included in kde4 anymore i’m using krunner now in stead. the problem about it is: i’ve no idea how to trigger certain functions. one line of documentation int the settings dialog would be enough. go to krunner->settings->plugins. you get the list of all plugins available and what they do but not how to make krunner do these things, even the information button can’t give any further information on that.
Where are the accents in your name at Planet KDE?
Krunner (or its settings dialogue) indeed lack a way of telling the user what keywords/commands one needs to use a certain plugin. For example the desktop search one, do I have to use “search xyz” or does it show them right away, can I use “search xy AND z” etc.
A simple button in the plug-ins list would suffice, yet there is string-freeze and hence happy guessing for KDE 4.2
Vinod Khare
Can it be made possible to search for firefox bookmarks?
Of course, if somebody writes a runner for that… KRunner is pluginbased so it just takes somebody with java or c++ (probably also ruby and python) skills to write it.
Are all these features the reason the runner is so much slower than the one in KDE 3? When I pressed ‘Alt + F2‘ in KDE 3, the dialogue popped up instantly. In KDE 4 it takes too many milliseconds, and thus feels quite unresponsive.
@JoselB: 10 cm in inch works here (trunk)
10 L is still not recognized
It would be nice to have some time conversions as well, like “135 mn in s” for example.
@Aaron Seigo: Thanks! the road sounds promising
@gull: Don’t know where are my accents. In fact I didn’t realized they were not there!
@Karl Ove Hufthammer: Maybe you should try disabling features you don’t need?
@Aurélien: Time conversion wilml come in KDE 4.3, but adding it now adds too much l10n
@KristofBal: Good to hear! Looking forward to it.
@Aurélien: Or better: I want to make it
. I already amde mass conversion, so probably Pétri will allow me to make one.
About L vs. l, I’ll look into it.
Hi,
I think that the important small thinks like “=” to compute, should be visible somewhere. E.g. shown in tooltip. Before this blogpost I was really confused
[...] KRunner is more powerful than it looks The other day I got a bit fed up of having a “Starting Akonadi server” dialog showing up each time I logged [...] [...]
I’m testing krunner as a part of KDE 4.2 on a test machine.
I’m also a katapult user on my KDE 3.5 machine, because I like a easy way to enter my programs I want to start. And I’m not a fan of the new kickoff menu.
Krunner is extremely powerful and it deserved a much better key combo than . It think as katapult replacer .
Is somewhere a good reference of all options of krunner. It will help me very much. In April I will install KDE 4.2 on my main machine.
ur right, it is more powerful than it seems.
i can’t remember where i first read about krunner,
but i LOVE it.
reading ebooks, i don’t even have to type ok(okular)
i can type part of the file’s name
cu gives me culture 02 – iain m banks
hehe, LOVE IT!
it’s also possible to run bash commands directly.
its also possible to write a expression like “sin(4)*sqrt(2)” and then put the “=” in the end and it will give you the result.