Comment by Wxc2jjJmST9XWWL | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Wxc2jjJmST9XWWL | Hacker News Reader

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Wxc2jjJmST9XWWL

I always preferred thunar or pcmanfm back when I was into exploring all those Desktop Environments and Window Managers ; some of the xfce/lxde tools are particularly light on additional libraries needed, which makes them great options if running a wm only and wanting a slim system. lxterminal with i3 or dwm for example. Actually preferred that compared to rxvt-unicode. But happy to agree on the larger point: it's been showing in the end product. Particularly the KDE community has done a wonderful job slimming down its codebase.

Tried KDE a few months back for a short time, was surprised that KDE's footprint (in mb of space on disk, not ram) was not that much heavier than LXQT. The desktop experience seemed polished, though for me it has far too much gimmickery (in settings), and at this point I'm quite used to Ubuntu's Gnome. But happy for a healthy ecosystem. When I got into Linux (back in ~2008 probably?), I remember the choice with regards to full DEs was KDE vs Gnome vs XFCE vs LXDE ; there are more today, but I would hate to see one of them gone for good, and wish all of them well. Good to read that KDE seems healthy.

I’m just a casual user, but three features I really like in Dolphin that I haven’t seen elsewhere:

- Split window, so you can have two explorers right next to each other.

- Tabs

- If you drag a file/folder into another folder, you get prompted about “copying or moving?”

In terms of health, I also appreciate that many of the devs frequent the kde subreddit, and they all seem really chill and receptive.

I am not that aware of the various file managers and their specific features these days. I guess it's about use case. I always want primarily something "which doesn't annoy", since the file manager is mostly there "just in case" for me. I live in the terminal, even for most file operations.

Back when I tested them out (years ago, so not relevant today, still): Considering dependencies (if not running KDE), but even then Dolphin always seemed to do something quite not intuitively for me. Can't name examples anymore.

Different people, different tools.

Yeah, totally. For some strange reason I'm envious of people who are mostly in the terminal, while at the same time that wouldn't at all suit my needs (I do graphic design, mapping, web and app development... and I just like using a mouse and clicking stuff!). And I haven't hopped around and tried anything new in a few years. I've lost my desire to break and fix things or try anything new, and now I just want something that works and that I'm used to (which for the last 4 years has been Arch + KDE Plasma).

I love the integrated terminal too! It's such a great idea which is now integral to my workflow.

- Split window (just use your window manager?) - Thunar has Tabs, and I'm sure lots of other file managers do too - That is a nice option, and others should copy it.

Agreed about tabs and split windows. I think they take over the window manager's job, and do it poorly.

About the menu, it is nice, but not unique. Windows' Explorer, for example, shows it when dragging with the right mouse button. Options include copying, moving, zipping and actions from any registered shell handlers.

That said, I think KDE is still the best desktop environment across all the operating systems I've tried.

Thanks. I haven't explored other file explorers in a while, and I figured that some of the features I listed exist elsewhere. But I was typing from my phone and was thus too lazy to type a qualifier.

"Just use your window manager" - and have two separate Dolphin windows? I mean, yeah. But it's very nice to have everything contained in one window. Right now I have five Dolphin tabs, four of which have split windows (I don't NEED this setup, but I like it).

Like GP I'm a very happy pcmanfm user most of the time, but I use spacefm sometimes and I know it has split window as an option. Not trying to convince you to leave dolphin, just mentioning in case you like exploring.

For the split views, there is Krusader which I have found a little more stable than Dolphin of late. The last annoys me at times. I'm used to years of clicking and dragging to copy, and holding down shift to move instead. All DEs and even Windows behave this way, I think they should bring it back at least as an option.

As a long-term (since last century) KDE user, it took me a long time to get used to Dolphin and wean myself off Konqueror.

I still see some weird artefacts / behaviour in Dolphin, notably around the sizing of the quick-access panels on the left, after window resizing, or display switching (effectively causing the former).

The copy/move option was present in Konqueror also, along with the same ctrl/shift modifier option to force copy / move without the pop-up.

FWIW with Microsoft Windows, for as long as I can remember, in Explorer you can right-mouse drag directory entries around, to trigger a similar copy/move pop-up. A little-known feature, but increasingly handy as Microsoft continues its war on its own users and obfuscates actual locations & paths, with the default move-if-on-the-same-drive / copy-if-not becoming harder to intuit due to these location abstractions.

> ... for me it has far too much gimmickery (in settings), ...

One person's gimmickry is another's convenience.

Does the alleged surfeit of configuration options materially affect your usage of KDE, or just offends your sensibilities that they're available?

It's a good thing for those "offended" by in-depth configurability that KDE's System Settings now opens to a reduced view called "quick settings". It's the "simple" part of the "Simple by default, powerful when needed" slogan manifesting itself.

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