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I really like the Unity interface. The usability, the look and especially the search. But the search got less and less responsive. In 14.04 I have to wait quiet some time before results appear (semi recent Core i5 with 8GB RAM) - btw: online results are already disabled and videos and music are disabled in the indexing settings.

I have a huge music and a large photo collection which needs no indexing and don't have to apear in the search results, neither does my (not that large) video collection. The only thing I'm interested in is that my installed programs and my other documents are indexed and searched.

Any hints on how to speed it up and remove the unnecessary stuff?

Are there good alternatives? I would love to keep the starter and also the search design, but maybe some other program / adon can be hooked in to use it.

Brutus
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  • You could try Unity Tweak Tool and play around with animations, (turning them off). My entire menu felt a lot quicker after doing that 6 days ago. – Ben Jul 04 '14 at 12:21
  • I have the same issue than you, but if no awnser found, it should be resolved with the time (Unity8 looks not working the same way, I can see all apps + searched apps instantly) – cm-t Jul 04 '14 at 13:11

1 Answers1

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  1. If you're only interested in some lenses, try to How to disable lenses in the Dash

    The for-loop in the next section can also be used to re-create the entire database if you've done a bunch or archiving... (E.G. if you've moved a bunch of music or pictures to DVD, USB hard drive, ...)

  2. If you're not interested in any lenses and only in your programs, you might disable zeitgeist altogether! (This is how I run)

The following line disables the zeitgeist datahub system-wide:

sudo mv /etc/xdg/autostart/zeitgeist-datahub.desktop /etc/xdg/autostart/zeitgeist-datahub.desktop-inactive

Now reboot

This line is just to activate sudo for the next couple of minutes:

sudo ls /home

The following lines are to remove the zeitgeist cache for all users

for szUser in /home/* ; do
  if [ -d "$szUser/.local/share/zeitgeist" ] ; then
    echo Removing $szUser/.local/share/zeitgeist
    sudo rm -rf $szUser/.local/share/zeitgeist
  fi
done

To enable again:

for szUser in /home/* ; do
  mkdir $szUser/.local/share/zeitgeist
done
sudo mv /etc/xdg/autostart/zeitgeist-datahub.desktop-inactive /etc/xdg/autostart/zeitgeist-datahub.desktop
Community
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Fabby
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  • Nice Info on zeitgeist. I like to be able to search for programs and documents. Because of slowness I already disabled some lenses I don't really need (audio, video, photos) but it's not that big of a speedup. Also I kinda like Zeitgeist and use it for some stuff, so disabling it is not a practical solution for me. – Brutus Nov 19 '14 at 18:50
  • Then re-create the database! It'll take a few days to repopulate, but all the crap you did back in the time you were experimenting with your system will be gone... (E.G. the data of the audio, video and photo lenses that are now disabled, are still present in the database) P.S. I'm not a native speaker of English and I don't know any good synonym for "crap" (except worse) that describes what I want to describe, so please don't be offended. ;) – Fabby Nov 20 '14 at 11:18
  • @Brutus: you never accepted the answer: click the little grey ☑ under the "0" now turning it into beautiful green. If you do not like the answer, click on the little grey down-arrow below the 0, and if you really like the answer, click on the little grey checkmark and the little up-arrow... If you have any further questions, just ask another one! – Fabby Aug 11 '15 at 20:18
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    Why sudo ls /home? – A.B. Aug 11 '15 at 20:19
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    @A.B. On standard systems, doing sudo the first time, will allow you to do a few sudo's afterwards in a script. (5 min or so?). As this is a loop that does rm I don't want the user to have to type sudo again (and making a mistake) mid-way the loop. – Fabby Aug 11 '15 at 20:23
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    @Fabby : I haven't accepted the answer, because it doesn't solve my problem. I already disabled some lenses (no noticeable speedup for me). Disabling Zeitgeist makes the HUD a little bit faster (in my case), but I want to keep it running, cause I use quite a lot of it's features in different programs. Upvoted it though, cause the advice might help other people. – Brutus Aug 13 '15 at 08:26