Language Selection

English French German Italian Portuguese Spanish

Konqueror in KDE4. It's not so terrible, I guess.

Filed under
Linux

I was a Konqueror fanboy before I was KDE fanboy. Back then, I was using Konqueror as my file manager in the fluxbox window manager. THAT is a whole 'nother kind of awesome, especially in the days of KDE 3, when it was the default file manager. Lately, Konqueror hasn't even been part of the default Desktop in Kubuntu. There are people who still haven't gotten over the switch to KDE4, and Konqueror is usually the reason. In KDE3, Konqueror was the most comprehensive desktop application ever, a web browser as well as a file manager, but it was even more than that. It had (and still has) its own application menus, and unlike most graphical file manager, Konqueror could and still does support application launchers as well as file icons. This meant that Konqueror could turn a window manager like fluxbox into a full service desktop environment,

The KDE3 desktop seemed to be designed to complement Konqueror, but in KDE4, Konqueror was just too big for the more elaborately planned desktop, and so the new default file manager became Dolphin, Dolphin and Konqueror share a lot of DNA, but Dolphin fits more easily into the KDE4 Desktop. Butthurt Konqueror fans still say terrible things about Dolphin, but they're not warranted. The worst thing you can say about Dolphin is that it's the second greatest file manager ever. You can launch applications from it, and you can use it to access Konqueror's built-in applications menu.

In KDE4, Konqueror has been pushed toward an assigned role as KDE's web browser, but it's not a very good one. It's only recently supported flash, and when I try to use it for Gmail, I get a message to upgrade my browser. It has a way of being in default web browser mode that makes it awkward to use as a file manager, but you can overcome that by setting konqueror up to go straight to a file location, maybe by editing a launcher, keybinding or menu item with a command like "konqueror ~/Desktop", or by setting up a local url like "~/Desktop" as Konqueror's home page, instead of a web page like kde.org. Konqueror no longer mounts removable media, so if you want to use it as a file manager, you may have to mount your flash drives manually.

You know what? I've been mourning the decline of Konqueror for three years now, and it's not so bad, just not that big a deal. Kubuntu has replaced Konqueror as the default web browser with Rekonq. This may be a good thing for Konqueror fanatics. KDE would never drop Konqueror, as this would surely result in the first-ever incident of software-related mob violence. So maybe, once Konqueror is freed from its ill-fitting web browser role, the KDE team will let Konqueror stand on its own merit. Konqueror would make a great OS on it's own, sort of like a badass version of Google's chrome.

These days, when I talk about how much I love Konqueror, in my mind I'm often using "Konqueror" as shorthand for the powerful paradigm that Konqueror originated, and Dolphin continues. In Gnome, you can launch applications from the Desktop, and you can open files with applications with nautilius. You can't launch applications from Nautilus. You can, however, launch applications from Konqueror, and you can launch applications from Dolphin, and you can do it from anywhere in your filesystem. In many ways, the Folder View activity that gives KDE4 the impressive ability to support several discrete desktops for several different projects is an extension of the special ability that began with Konqueror. In some ways, what I was doing with Konqueror in my custom fluxbox desktop of a few years ago was a preview of KDE4. So why did KDE4 make me so mad?

I've just recently (over the weekend) discovered to my surprise that I sort of like Unity*, but that only means I will be using unity to open these amazing KDE applications. Wherever I go in the Linux desktop world I take Konqueror with me, and these days I also take Dolphin. And I'm always glad I did.

*false alarm! It's better than I thought, but I don't think I'll be switching to unity. maybe I'll go back to the super-powered pardigm of konqueror/fluxbox

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.

Screenshot: Konqueror

Screenshot: Konqueror 3.5.10, application menu in Fluxbox:

More in Tux Machines

digiKam 7.7.0 is released

After three months of active maintenance and another bug triage, the digiKam team is proud to present version 7.7.0 of its open source digital photo manager. See below the list of most important features coming with this release. Read more

Dilution and Misuse of the "Linux" Brand

Samsung, Red Hat to Work on Linux Drivers for Future Tech

The metaverse is expected to uproot system design as we know it, and Samsung is one of many hardware vendors re-imagining data center infrastructure in preparation for a parallel 3D world. Samsung is working on new memory technologies that provide faster bandwidth inside hardware for data to travel between CPUs, storage and other computing resources. The company also announced it was partnering with Red Hat to ensure these technologies have Linux compatibility. Read more

today's howtos

  • How to install go1.19beta on Ubuntu 22.04 – NextGenTips

    In this tutorial, we are going to explore how to install go on Ubuntu 22.04 Golang is an open-source programming language that is easy to learn and use. It is built-in concurrency and has a robust standard library. It is reliable, builds fast, and efficient software that scales fast. Its concurrency mechanisms make it easy to write programs that get the most out of multicore and networked machines, while its novel-type systems enable flexible and modular program constructions. Go compiles quickly to machine code and has the convenience of garbage collection and the power of run-time reflection. In this guide, we are going to learn how to install golang 1.19beta on Ubuntu 22.04. Go 1.19beta1 is not yet released. There is so much work in progress with all the documentation.

  • molecule test: failed to connect to bus in systemd container - openQA bites

    Ansible Molecule is a project to help you test your ansible roles. I’m using molecule for automatically testing the ansible roles of geekoops.

  • How To Install MongoDB on AlmaLinux 9 - idroot

    In this tutorial, we will show you how to install MongoDB on AlmaLinux 9. For those of you who didn’t know, MongoDB is a high-performance, highly scalable document-oriented NoSQL database. Unlike in SQL databases where data is stored in rows and columns inside tables, in MongoDB, data is structured in JSON-like format inside records which are referred to as documents. The open-source attribute of MongoDB as a database software makes it an ideal candidate for almost any database-related project. This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the MongoDB NoSQL database on AlmaLinux 9. You can follow the same instructions for CentOS and Rocky Linux.

  • An introduction (and how-to) to Plugin Loader for the Steam Deck. - Invidious
  • Self-host a Ghost Blog With Traefik

    Ghost is a very popular open-source content management system. Started as an alternative to WordPress and it went on to become an alternative to Substack by focusing on membership and newsletter. The creators of Ghost offer managed Pro hosting but it may not fit everyone's budget. Alternatively, you can self-host it on your own cloud servers. On Linux handbook, we already have a guide on deploying Ghost with Docker in a reverse proxy setup. Instead of Ngnix reverse proxy, you can also use another software called Traefik with Docker. It is a popular open-source cloud-native application proxy, API Gateway, Edge-router, and more. I use Traefik to secure my websites using an SSL certificate obtained from Let's Encrypt. Once deployed, Traefik can automatically manage your certificates and their renewals. In this tutorial, I'll share the necessary steps for deploying a Ghost blog with Docker and Traefik.