Re: What is tumbler, and do I need it?
On Wed, 24 Sep 2025 12:08:59 -0700
Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@surfnaked.ca> wrote:
> I just tried displaying a JPEG file with ristretto. Rather than
> popping up right away, there was a delay of 30 seconds or so before
> the image finally appeared. Running ps, I found a process called
> tumblerd, which appeared to be consuming system resources. A bit of
> web searching revealed that other people have had trouble with this
> too.
>
> Looking for a description of tumbler, I found the following:
> "Tumbler is a D-Bus service for applications to request thumbnails
> for various URI schemes and MIME types." OK, my eyes are glazed
> over now. In practical terms, what does this mean? Is it anything
> to do with the thumbnails I see in thunar? Or is it something
> unrelated - and should I care?
>
> When I ask to see a picture, I don't want my machine running off
> and doing God knows what behind my back. I'll leave that kind of
> behaviour to Windows vict^H^H^H^Husers.
>
> Is there any reason I shouldn't remove or disable this package?
>
Do you want thumbnails?
I'd guess it will depend on how many pictures are in the directory.
Ristretto has a sidebar containing the thumbnails for the entire
directory, though possibly they are only created once, the first time
ristretto sees that directory and then cached, I don't know. I use Eye
of Gnome (ah, one I forgot to mention earlier among the Gnome
applications I use) and there are several other viewers.
--
Joe
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