Disabling Zeitgeist

Question

I have zeitgeist daemon always in processes. I don't see the point of this zeitgeist, it logs my activity. i removed it from startup programs, but it is still there.

Can I uninstall this package? Why do I need it at all?

Answer 1

Run sudo apt-get remove zeitgeist* in a terminal. It might remove a few related packages, but so long as you don't see anything suggested for removal that you don't want, you should be fine.

As per comments: you will lose unity functionality (I was not sure how much when I first wrote the answer) if you remove zeitgeist. So, I suggest you just disable logging.

If you don't need unity to function correctly, you can go ahead and remove zeitgeist, and just use the classic session (from the login screen).

You can also blacklist everything or turn off logging altogether.

Answer 2

If you remove Zeitgeist from the repo then the menu in Unity wont work properly, it stops you searching for programs by typing into the box.

Answer 3

There is an easy way described here -- which does not include deleting any package, but simply de-activating the corresponding services. I didn't try it myself, but this way side-effects should be minimal (and probably even wanted, as e.g. no "recent items" being available etc. Moreover, it is easily revertable in case of "unwanted" side effects.

The author of that article explicitly states: Here is a way to disable this logging without breaking Unity or any other part of the system, execute these commands in a terminal:

sudo mv /etc/xdg/autostart/zeitgeist-datahub.desktop /etc/xdg/autostart/zeitgeist-datahub.desktop-inactive
rm ~/.local/share/recently-used.xbel
mkdir ~/.local/share/recently-used.xbel
rm -rf ~/.local/share/zeitgeist

Reverting this (if one wants to enable Zeitgeist again) thus should be done like this:

mkdir ~/.local/share/zeitgeist
rmdir ~/.local/share/recently-used.xbel
# no action for the .xbel file, as it will be re-created automatically
sudo mv /etc/xdg/autostart/zeitgeist-datahub.desktop-inactive /etc/xdg/autostart/zeitgeist-datahub.desktop

which is simply "reversing" the steps of the de-activation.

Remark: The ~/.local/share/recently-used.xbel has nothing to do with Zeitgeist itself, it just falls into the same category somehow. The article mentioned is about "disabling activity logging", and thus included this. If you just want to disable Zeitgeist, you can skip the two middle steps.