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Poll

Do you use the file indexer feature ? Would you use and need tracker3 ?

Yes. I do need a file indexer feature. I would use tracker3.
[ 0 ] (0%)
No. I do not need file indexer feature. I can handle it on my own.
[ 7 ] (77.8%)
I have no idea what tracker3 is.
[ 2 ] (22.2%)

Total Members Voted: 9

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Topic: GTK3 requires tracker3 as a dependency. I also added a poll for tracker3 usage (Read 1443 times) previous topic - next topic
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GTK3 requires tracker3 as a dependency. I also added a poll for tracker3 usage

Salutations,
I like Artix because it tries to be minimal but in Arch repository the last update of gtk3 requires tracker3 as a dependency now. I do not think i need a file indexer on my system i already can find my files without this feature so keeping it minimal i dont need tracker3 now. Thats why i prefer to not having it installed on my system. Can Artix offer gtk3 without tracker3 ? we should built gtk3 from source ? or we should keep it as downgraded ?

Also i would like to make a poll to see how many users would like to that feature on their own systems.

Re: GTK3 requires tracker3 as a dependency. I also added a poll for tracker3 usage

Reply #1
To my knowledge, all tracker3 support in gtk does is show "recent" in the file upload dialog. Anyways, Arch and Artix by extension generally have a policy of enabling features in packages so I doubt this particular thing will be changed.

Re: GTK3 requires tracker3 as a dependency. I also added a poll for tracker3 usage

Reply #2
What is the difference between tracker3 and mlocate or plocate? locate works pretty well as a file indexing and searching tool for me.

Re: GTK3 requires tracker3 as a dependency. I also added a poll for tracker3 usage

Reply #3
What is the difference between tracker3 and mlocate or plocate? locate works pretty well as a file indexing and searching tool for me.
That is a good question.Someone can correct me if i am wrong but plocate mlocate and based on that logic usage is more like searching on the fly  it is simple and minimal but tracker3 is more like a service i guess  but thats not the only problem in fact tracker3 is much more complex tracer tool than mlocate which is its probably more bloated(feature-rich). According to Arch description about tracker3 "Desktop-neutral user information store, search tool and indexer" . I think big difference is, mlocate is something you can remove from your system and its optional which feels right but you cant remove tracker3 if you try that then gtk3 will be removed that means destroying whole system. In that case i believe it feels a bit of conflict with freedom open-source minded approach because a stable system should not get destroyed without a file indexer searcher and tracker, there only should not searching feature, not functional. My actual concern here is, it seems like a mandatory tool to use gtk3. Similar to KDE situation as i see if you are not gonna use night color feature on KDE then why should you keep qt5-location package? it automatically gets your location information without asking your permission when you click night color tab. That feels a bit of not right in way of the minimalism because if you are not gonna use it and if its not critical for system to work then you could remove packages from your system.


Re: GTK3 requires tracker3 as a dependency. I also added a poll for tracker3 usage

Reply #4
plocate mlocate and based on that logic usage is more like searching on the fly  it is simple and minimal
Yeah, that's true. Both utilities work in a similar way, these create database indices for filesystem and allow to search for files momentarily. These databases are updated daily via cron task or systemd timer (for the systemd-based systems). The difference between these two is in the indexing algorithm, plocate tends to work faster and consume less disk space than mlocate.

I think big difference is, mlocate is something you can remove from your system and its optional which feels right
That's true, locate tools usually aren't installed by default. You need to install them separately and you can uninstall them whenever you want.

but you cant remove tracker3 if you try that then gtk3 will be removed that means destroying whole system. In that case i believe it feels a bit of conflict with freedom open-source minded approach because a stable system should not get destroyed without a file indexer searcher and tracker, there only should not searching feature, not functional.
I suppose this violates not FOSS approach, but the UNIX-like one (UNIXes may be proprietary too), i.e. "one tool one feature". Tools like locate are built in UNIX-way in this regard, and, moreover, because in UNIX "everything is file", then locate-like tool, by indexing files, index everything.

Although systemd adherents claim that "UNIX is dead", I strongly doubt that. UNIX approach is not dead and it will remain alive whilst developers implement this approach in their products. The thing is, large corporations are not interested in UNIX approach, but members of Linux communities are. It seems that nowadays the latter are those who keep the UNIX-way alive.

Re: GTK3 requires tracker3 as a dependency. I also added a poll for tracker3 usage

Reply #5
I suppose this violates not FOSS approach, but the UNIX-like one (UNIXes may be proprietary too), i.e. "one tool one feature".
Unix started as a proprietary OS, and only later its derivatives under various "free" licenses were developed (the original 386BSD was released under a 4+-clause flawed BSD license.). When Unix is mentioned, however, it is generally regarded as a proprietary OS.  GNU (short for "GNU's Not Unix!") on the other hand, is a complete rewrite under the GNU GPL and is a Libre (Free as in "freedom") OS.

gtk3 will be removed that means destroying whole system.
This is, of course, false, depending on your definition of "destroying whole system". You system will at worst only become effectively unusable due to DM constantly restarting and crashing, and even that only if your DM uses GTK. This state can be fixed by booting from a Live ISO and either switching to a DM-less login from a live chroot, or reinstalling gtk3+tracker back from it.

If you don't want tracker3, you have several options:


Re: GTK3 requires tracker3 as a dependency. I also added a poll for tracker3 usage

Reply #6
Unix started as a proprietary OS, and only later its derivatives under various "free" licenses were developed (the original 386BSD was released under a 4+-clause flawed BSD license.). When Unix is mentioned, however, it is generally regarded as a proprietary OS.  GNU (short for "GNU's Not Unix!") on the other hand, is a complete rewrite under the GNU GPL and is a Libre (Free as in "freedom") OS.
Yeah, I mean, the "UNIX-way" is an engineering approach. FOSS, on the other hand, is not an engineering approach, but rather a social institution (or, if you like, it belongs to a some kind of a social engineering). Technically, there is no difference between a proprietary and a free pieces of software. Both are just pieces of code which are executed by a CPU. The difference between them lies in the human relationships over the particular software, i.e. how it is developed, distributed and consumed by humans. Thus, FOSS is not about software per se, but about the people who constitute communities built around the software. What mostly attracts me in FOSS, is not the technologies (which are amazing BTW), but people in the first place.

Personally, I don't use GNOME, but I do use some GTK applications which apparently depend on gtk3 nowadays.

 

Re: GTK3 requires tracker3 as a dependency. I also added a poll for tracker3 usage

Reply #7
Thank you for your correction and answer then i wanna make an addition to define it better without tracker3 installed you can not use gtk3. Even KDE comes with gtk3 preinstalled and most of applications are based on gtk. That means you cant even use a simple gui text editor without gtk. That is because unfortunately gtk is still dominant in gui applications.

Quote
This state can be fixed by booting from a Live ISO and either switching to a DM-less login from a live chroot, or reinstalling gtk3+tracker back from it
I guess you recommend me to solve this problem is simply by installing tracker3. I am not trying to install tracker3 i was talking about it feels wrong when it's mandatory. Probably i couldn't express myself sorry.

Quote
Don't use GNOME. You can use KDE-based DE, or just plain X.Org with no DE at all. Personally, I'm using the latter approach, using no-DE, no-DM X.Org with dwm.
I have to admit  i'm impressed because  this approach leads to don't use anything i guess(include computers? haha joking of course).  I wondered something if you don't mind. I have seen that you used "chrome" browser to post your message. Even if its not chrome then it should be a chromium based browser. How did you post your message to this thread without gtk3 installed on your system? because chrome,chromium,brave,vivaldi and opera all of them require gtk3.

PS. I respect all of you developers and i think you are superior than us (users). My individual solution would be just simply compiling gtk3 from source but as i said that would be an individual solution. I opened this thread for getting community-wide solution to get a useful result for all of us the community and i like this community. Because i feel you developers share similar mindset as i have. These are minimalist privacy respected oriented mindset.

Re: GTK3 requires tracker3 as a dependency. I also added a poll for tracker3 usage

Reply #8
I wondered something if you don't mind. I have seen that you used "chrome" browser to post your message. Even if its not chrome then it should be a chromium based browser. How did you post your message to this thread without gtk3 installed on your system? because chrome,chromium,brave,vivaldi and opera all of them requires gtk3.
I mostly use ungoogled-chromium and thus have gtk3 and tracker3 installed (currently), because it is a dependency. I don't use GNOME shell however.

Generally, you should not believe the "User-Agent" header, as it can be spoofed. For example, when I used Librewolf, I had an extension which reported that I was using "Windows 10", which was of course false.

Back to the topic, tracker3 seems to be started by a systemd service in Arch, and doesn't have corresponding service packages in Artix, so it shouldn't do anything. Still, after a discussion, it was eventually agreed to disable tracker3 for the time being.

Re: GTK3 requires tracker3 as a dependency. I also added a poll for tracker3 usage

Reply #9
tracker3 has been disabled in the newest gtk3 package again. As it was stated above, it's a file indexer. On arch, this was started automagically via systemd services and stuff so the daemon runs in the background. On Artix, we obviously don't have have that so in practice, tracker3 does literally nothing. So enabling by default doesn't really make any sense since nothing is gained. It's a pointless dependency.

Re: GTK3 requires tracker3 as a dependency. I also added a poll for tracker3 usage

Reply #10
I mostly use ungoogled-chromium and thus have gtk3 and tracker3 installed (currently), because it is a dependency. I don't use GNOME shell however.

Generally, you should not believe the "User-Agent" header, as it can be spoofed. For example, when I used Librewolf, I had an extension which reported that I was using "Windows 10", which was of course false.

Back to the topic, tracker3 seems to be started by a systemd service in Arch, and doesn't have corresponding service packages in Artix, so it shouldn't do anything. Still, after a discussion, it was eventually agreed to disable tracker3 for the time being.
Thank you that means it seems like i expressed myself better then. I am glad we agreed. I don't use gnome shell either. Actually i never used gnome for long. So basically gnome is not related to our topic(We are interested in gtk3 and tracker3 mandatory relation).

Yes i already thought about that but i felt like it is unnecessary to mention about it because it is firefox based hence really good privacy-respected browser however firefox depends on gtk3 unfortunately. So that wouldn't change the result therefore i felt like i shouldn't mention about spoofing.

I agree with you and i read about discussion in past. Actually that's the reason i opened a thread here instead of gnome forums or arch forums because i have seen a topic opened by someone else, but admins removed the topic about tracker3 in arch linux forums. I opened here a thread here because i feel that Artix Linux developers and community are more open-minded people also more unique when they approach problems(OpenRC,Runit,S6 inits with Arch, that is a unique approach i like from Artix Linux, also Artix distributions feels lightweight) and i thought we can probably discuss that issue on here better and hopefully maybe getting a solution by community-wide scale.

Re: GTK3 requires tracker3 as a dependency. I also added a poll for tracker3 usage

Reply #11
tracker3 has been disabled in the newest gtk3 package again. As it was stated above, it's a file indexer. On arch, this was started automagically via systemd services and stuff so the daemon runs in the background. On Artix, we obviously don't have have that so in practice, tracker3 does literally nothing. So enabling by default doesn't really make any sense since nothing is gained. It's a pointless dependency.
Thank you if you say so then i can mark this thread as solved. I agree with your statement and it makes sense.
I wanna thank all of developers who listen us the community then i wanna thank the community who read and followed the thread also thank to the member who posted on own opinion @VictorBrand . It is good be a part of Artix Community. Artix is a minimalist,privacy-respected and lightweight distribution with helpful forum.

Re: GTK3 requires tracker3 as a dependency. I also added a poll for tracker3 usage

Reply #12
Semi-related but the gtk4 package also had tracker enabled. This has been removed in the newest update.