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I wanted to dismount a volume and lsof showed kactivitymanagerd had a directory open (cwd DIR) that I hadn't worked in since yesterday. I might have used Kate to edit a file in that directory. I don't use KDE.

What does this daemon do, and why would I want it running on my computer? Its GitHub project doesn't provide end-user information.

How can it be disabled?

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    It doesn't do one thing I want. I know my activity and I don't need my computer keeping a log of it. If its MY computer, and the purpose of this isn't for me, then who is it for? There's a lot of KDE applications I'd use, but because kactivitymanagerd is an arbitrarily decided unnecessary dependency of those packages, I'm not interested. You should be able to remove this package with no other consequence than disabling the unwanted "functionality" kactivitymanagerd provides. As is, this is NOT the case! Jul 9, 2022 at 18:28

4 Answers 4

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To the question:

What does this daemon do?

See the 'readme' of kactivitymanagerd, it is quite understandable.

KActivities

Core components for the KDE Activity concept

Introduction

When a user is interacting with a computer, there are three main areas of contextual information that may affect the behaviour of the system: who the user is, where they are, and what they are doing.

Activities deal with the last one. An activity might be "developing a KDE application", "studying 19th century art", "composing music" or "watching funny videos". Each of these activites may involve multiple applications, and a single application may be used in multiple activities (for example, most activities are likely to involve using a web browser, but different activities will probably involve different websites).

KActivities provides the infrastructure needed to manage a user's activites, allowing them to switch between tasks, and for applications to update their state to match the user's current activity. This includes a daemon, a library for interacting with that daemon, and plugins for integration with other frameworks.

Usage

Most applications that wish to be activity-aware will want to use KActivities::Consumer to keep track of the user's current activity, and KActivities::ResourceInstance to notify the activity manager of resources the user has accessed (this is not necessary for resources accessed via KIO, as a plugin is provided to do that automatically).

The other classes available in the API are primarily intended for use by the workspace to allow the user to view and manage available activities.

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    "quite understandable"? Yes, you're right, spying is "quite understandable". Its just not "quite desirable" by anyone but the "spEYErable" (had to make it rhyme). It seems similar to this. Oct 28, 2021 at 11:45
  • @LonnieBest Well, the link you gave applies to windows. Are you meaning that the information gathered by the activity manager in Linux/Ubuntu is sent somewhere else outside of my computer? If so, please provide evidence or at least indications. Thanks! Oct 28, 2021 at 13:48
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    Why else would anyone take the time to create something like this? As a user, I desire for each application to be completely unaware of all other applications. I find it quite suspicious that this service isn't easily disabled or removable. Others mention that removing it uninstalls the entire desktop! I know my own recent activity; why would I want my computer to keep a log of it. It is not for my benefit, and I cannot turn it off: It is such a deeply ingrained dependency that you cannot remove it or disable it? Someone really wants it to be there and they're paranoid too. Not me! Oct 29, 2021 at 10:39
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    Staggering! Now, your concerns makes much more sense to me. Still, could you provide more expanded information/opinions on that (links or whatever reference). Be blessed! Oct 29, 2021 at 11:31
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    Here's a link. Here's another. This is the direction I'd like to see more widely adopted. Not activity loggers you can't disable or remove! Oct 29, 2021 at 12:07
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You should remove the package associated with it.

sudo apt remove kactivities

After that, the popup about kactivitymanagerd doesn't show up by ejecting external disks. I don't see any unpleasant difference in behaviour.

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    it will remove the entire kde desktop. it might be okay for some but not for all.
    – ozma
    Jul 12, 2018 at 0:26
  • Read the question. OP said they don't use KDE, so we can assume KDE desktop is not installed.
    – banan314
    Aug 3, 2018 at 20:02
  • I couldn't find any package kactivities in Ubuntu 18.04, but I could do apt-get remove kactivitymanagerd Feb 12, 2019 at 18:44
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kactivitymanagerd --help
   start    Starts the service
   stop     Stops the server
   status   Prints basic server information
   start-daemon Starts the service without forking (use with caution)

~/.local/share/kactivitymanagerd/resources/
   # There is its database here.

When you run it from a terminal and then change a file. It will export this:

Creating the cache for:  "/home/user/bash/ubuntu.txt"
Already in database?  true
First update :  QDateTime(2020-01-31 09:26:01.000 CET Qt::TimeSpec(LocalTime))
Last update :  QDateTime(2020-07-02 21:07:38.000 CEST Qt::TimeSpec(LocalTime))
After the adjustment
Current score :  4375.59
First update :  QDateTime(2020-01-31 09:26:01.000 CET Qt::TimeSpec(LocalTime))
Last update :  QDateTime(2020-07-02 21:07:38.000 CEST Qt::TimeSpec(LocalTime))
Interval length is  19
New score :  4375.9
ResourceScoreUpdated: "1946e56b-9e97-4745-afca-cc143ede0c6c" "kwrite" "/home/user/bash/notes.txt"

I do not have clear idea why should I keep it as well...

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My solution was to navigate to ~/.local/share/ and change the owner and permissions for files RecentDocuments, recently-used.xml, kactivitymanagerd to root, also removing the contents of these folders. Putting a spoke in its wheel!

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