I agree with your sentiment, although I disagree with the way you said it. On the actual issues raised, most of them can indeed be turned off or at the very least mitigated some how.
Akonadi is indeed a resource hog and useless (a dozen processes and 100+MB memory usage). If you don't use any KDE PIM application (Kmail, Korganizer) or any calendar event integration they don't appear. Nepomuk is no more, replaced by baloo, which is actually pretty fast and light on resource usage, so I keep it running. But it can be easily turned off in the system settings under the desktop search item. I don't use activities, the only trace of it is a kactivitymangered process running, if it bothers you that much you can set up a startup script to kill it.
The tray icons and cashew you may have a point. Although I like monochrome status icons but the cashew is an eyesore, so I drag it underneath the panel and it stays out of the way.
Akonadi is indeed a resource hog and useless (a dozen processes and 100+MB memory usage). If you don't use any KDE PIM application (Kmail, Korganizer) or any calendar event integration they don't appear. Nepomuk is no more, replaced by baloo, which is actually pretty fast and light on resource usage, so I keep it running. But it can be easily turned off in the system settings under the desktop search item. I don't use activities, the only trace of it is a kactivitymangered process running, if it bothers you that much you can set up a startup script to kill it.
The tray icons and cashew you may have a point. Although I like monochrome status icons but the cashew is an eyesore, so I drag it underneath the panel and it stays out of the way.