i really didn't want to blog again today, but then i read that "we may see konqueror vanish" due to dolphin being in kdebase. some other sites picked this up, of course, because it's sensational. like many sensational headlines, it's also wrong.
i blogged about this once already a while back, but let me state it again really clearly:
konqueror is a power user's application that can not be fully replaced by something like dolphin (and vice versa). they have different use cases and different target audiences. both are valid concepts and both will be sharing the vast majority of their code, sort of like how kwrite is little more than a shell around katepart.
what is on the plan right now is for dolphin to become the file manager that gets launched from the default panel buttons and by apps requesting to launch a file manager. and just like in kde3 you will be able to configure all of this quite easily so that it uses konqueror (or whatever other tool you prefer, e.g. krusader) instead.
moral of the story: if you have a question try asking the people involved and you'll probably get an informed answer.
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27 comments:
Sorry for making so much trouble - I didn't even meant "vanish" like most people understood it (as it looks like).
And I had no idea that some people would be interested in this post - I almost dropped it but wrote it because I had some spare minutes and nothing else to do.
I added the link to your blog post and even updated the text in-line (I normally don't do this), hopefully that will clear some things.
I think there is no problem as you say kde is full configurable by the user.
Your are really doing a very good job, thanks a lot I'll be waiting for KDE 4, i'm sure it would be the best thing we ever saw in our computer.
Sorry for my english, is not very comprensible.
enguillem
Please let's not have some kind of GNOME experience where Nautilus has to pop up other applications (seemingly incapable ones too on Red Hat, at least), along with all the window proliferation issues, endless open/save/cancel dialogues, and so on. If people want their Norton Commander (or whatever it is they keep going on about) or to exercise their C64 or GEM nostalgia, there are plenty of minimal desktop solutions already catering for them - after all, that's what the UNIX desktop was all about until KDE came along.
As various people pointed out, a capable "resource manager" is what makes KDE so attractive. We have the Web, URLs and the notion that no resource is significantly different from any other just because of where it resides. Let's not pretend the Internet "didn't happen" and start pushing 1980s solutions all over again.
My fear is that the development focus will be on dolphin, leaving the file manager part of konqueror "unmantained".
Other than that, switching to dolphin we will lose konqueror kparts integration, which is a must for a modern filemanager, not to say ftp/local files drag'n'drop, which is gourgeous.
i could have expected such a choice (switching from a powerful file manager to a simpler one) from the GNOME project :-)
I wish that, during first KDE startup, the user will be asked to choose his file manager...
zakk
P.S.: thank you for your great work, aaron!
Interestingly both Peter, Dolphin's original creator, and the KDE folks seem to have anticipated some confusion about this issue, and have always stated clearly that Dolphin is not supposed to kill Konqueror. Emphasizing on simplicity is important for KDE's appeal to the mass market, and power users won't find it difficult to re-configure the default filemanager (in case they choose to). Also, why not wait until Dolphin is finalized and judge it by then?
fear, blah blah, gnome, blah blah. *sigh*
look, change is scary. i know that, you know that. but that does not mean change is bad. bad change is bad, good change is good (though often still scary).
so.... there seems to be three concerns here:
1) dolphin won't be able to view non-local resources. this isn't even true of the kde3 version of dolphin. dolphin has all the kio goodness that any other kde app, including konqueror, has.
2) "OMG! IT'S GOING TO BE DUMBED DOWN!" just because gnome decided that exposing features and options was their route to simple interfaces does not mean that it is ours because we present a simplified interface. that said, if you need/want something more than dolphin, that's what konqueror is there for.
3) "konqueror will be unmaintained". well, if nobody uses it perhaps. but i don't see that happening. dolphin and konqueror share an amazing amount of code, e.g. pretty much the entire file view system. what is different is the browse vs manage paradigm, the sidebars and some of the more advanced features of konqueror like unlimited window splitting (dolphin currently only support one split, though a third is likely to be supported as well)
in the end, if you like the browser concept use konqueror. if you like a manager concept, use dolphin. neither says anything about locality, etc.
so please don't jump to the conclusion that either konqueror is being removed or that your experience with kde is somehow worth more than the other millions of people who need/want something more like dolphin.
No treeview (of just directories with no files mixed in) = bad. Of course I'll be able to configure KDE to use Konqueror instead of defaults, but wouldn't a saner default be better? Windows users (and KDE users, who've been using Konqueror) expect to see the filesystem as a tree. Norton Commander isn't exactly a mainstream thing anymore. Of course, Konqueror can ape Norton Commander just fine by itself, so I am not seeing the need for Dolphin at all.
All that is really needed is separate configs for file browsing and web browsing. This doesn't work too well right now. Try having different sized icons for web browsing and file browsing mode. https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=85454
With that and related bugs fixed, konqueror is more than capable of replicating any layout Dolphin could come up with, making the latter imho superfluous.
Thanks for setting this right, I am not sure I agree with Dolphin being the file manager by default but as long as I can change it to use konqueror that is fine by me. Options are always good.
"1) dolphin won't be able to view non-local resources. this isn't even true of the kde3 version of dolphin. dolphin has all the kio goodness that any other kde app, including konqueror, has."
I knew I should have extended my point about location independence to refer to seamless resource browsing - that you click on a link and you get whatever the resource is in the same window/panel as if Konqueror knows how to display any kind of document. Of course there's kio "goodness" (thinks of various kio processes hanging on resources last visited several days ago), but I thought that decoupling document types from applications was the big innovation of the 1990s - you know, Taligent, OpenDoc, General Magic?
Hello, I do not fear Konquerer disappearing but I would really like to be able to use it as just a web browser. I really like the way it renders web pages. It would be nice to have as a stand alone program for such a use.
While there is a diffrence between Gnome's no options style of simplisity and KDE's more sane style, I think it is worth pointing out that:
1) Linux users are quite often power users, shouldn't KDE's defaults reflect this?
2) If you simplify things for mainstreem users they'll stay mainstreem, a good DE should encorage them to improve their skills, not by makeing things hard but by constantly saying "look at this feature, learn how to use it and you'll benifit"
@mamiyaotaru: if there is a need for a treeview, we'll add one to dolphin. what we're doing right now is seeing if it is really necessary given the features of the breadcrumb. maybe, maybe not. but if we can avoid a treeview that would be great as most people and trees don't get along (it's a human brain thing; some of (e.g. you and i, probably) somehow get around that ;)
as for "just needing different configs", all i can say is that we've tried this.. we've looked into what it would take to do it "properly" and it is not pretty. sanity lies elsewhere; but please feel free to look into the code and prove us wrong =))
@scott: don't worry, you can always use konq for web browsing, and right now it is still the default for that. even if another single-purpose app does arise for web browsing, it wil luse the facilities konqueror does just as dolphin and konqueror share facilities.
@paul bodie: this is the distinction between a browser and a manager. and lo! many people want a file -manager-; the use cases they provide are more than understandable, they are quite valid.
@anonymous: you are right that many linux users are power users (though that % diminishes day by day) and that a good interfaces encourages growth. those things, gnome philosophy be damned, are not mutually exclusive with a good interface.
OK, I'll agree using different configs for different usage cases is not so hot (see the bug I linked to).
Same app for different uses also bloats the config dialog and menu entries. In that sense, I guess Dolphin as a standalone filebrowser wold be good (hopefully with the current functionality of konqueror in filebrowse mode, shared kparts or something).
Of course, if that happens, it would be nice to remove the filebrowsing config options from konqueror as I'd still use it as a webbrowser. If one is going to create a new app for filebrowsing, one really ought to focus konqueror on webbrowsing and avoid having two apps for the same thing. Don't do it half assed.
This will only work for me though if dolphin gets an (optional at least) file tree. To me, a tree is what my filesystem looks like and always has. I cannot use a filebrowser without it. I also cannot imagine that people really have such difficulty with it. It's been in explorer and konqueror forever.
Please give a file tree to dolphin! With that, I could use it, and would then love to see konqueror trimmed down to focus on the web. I'm buying into one app/one purpose, and I'd hate to have to use KDEs webbrowser to browse files because the filebrowser has no file tree.
@aaron
"gnome philosophy be damned, are not mutually exclusive with a good interface."
Its true, but my point was that given the high level of power users maby konquoror is a more sensible default than a dolphin. And for the non-power users: having extra features in the standard browser would make it easier to move up the ranks than having to switch from dolphin to konquror.
Its also worth pointing out that non-power users arn't confused by functionality, I use konquorer but I barely touch the surface of its features, yet having those features never bothered me. User's who are worse with computers probobly won't know the features are their untill they start improving their skills.
A good interface is nice but there is really no need to have less features to create one.
oops. that was me just above ^^
damnit, someone posted in between my accidentally anonymous post and the post identifying it as being from me.
Mine begins "OK, I'll agree using different configs for different usage cases is not so hot (see the bug I linked to)."
How embarrassing :-/
I'm not sure where to post this so I'll put this here.
In Dolphin file names below an icon sometimes start new lines in the middle of a word. This dosn't happen in Konquerer. Could someone please copy Konquerer's code over, new lines in the middle of a word are horribly ugly.
It's realy sad to see duplicate effort. How many hours of coding lost in developping Dolphin that could have been used to fix konqueror (CSS3 is fine, but javascript is.......)
konquror has profiles for file browsing, wonderfull filelight interface for cleaning directories, and much much more.
Please stop Dolphin and leave dupplicate effort challenges to Gnome project.
And please, one for all, don't suppose users are Dumb! Tree view is in Windows explorer since ages!
KDE is a wonderfull clear, concise desktop environment, please don't cripple it with dupplicate applications. This is the most confusing thing a new user could experience: what app to chose.
Right now, we have
- one browser
- one media burner
- one desktop suite
- one photo management
...
I see dolphin as the beginning of
- Several file browsers
- Several duplicate apps.
don't you aime at a k3b concurent, a simplified koffice and such?
I even think that one day, amarok and kaffeine should merge. My music lybrary is half mp3 and half mp2-video (tv recording), thus I cannot have common playlist...You see the point?
/me: not happy with new directions....
@Anonymous above: it's not really a duplicated effort. Aaron has already mentioned that Dolphin reuses a huge amount of code from Konqueror. Your concerns regarding javascript etc. are also somewhat misguided seeing as Dolphin is a file manager and will not be taking over web browsing from Konqueror.
Sorry, but I still concider that as duplicate efforts as the time lost in coding dolphin (envethough there is code re-use) could have been used to fix javascript in konqueror for example. (that was my point when speaking javascript).
Olivier.
I wonder just about one thing...
Is Kde dropping the Kblabla-naming style ?
I mean we had Konqueror, Karamba (SuperKaramba),....
and now it's Dolphin and Plasma...
Are there any plans for a consistent naming style of apps ? (at least for those who are in kdebase)
All I'd like to understand (and, sincerely, nothing I read till now makes me to): Why?
Ok, this dolphin dude has a few features (good features, actually, like the breadcrumbs, bookmarks and that right panel) more than konqueror, what is great but, again ... WHY not to spend all the effort for a new app in adding those features to konqueror? ... And, still, (again) WHY a new app? If the new one only brings a few features plus (which, once again, would have less effort spent by adding them to the user needs fitting existing one) and some less (which user that needs - and/or is used to - them will really miss, as the navigation tree or the unlimited view splitting - why to rebuild what is working)?
So, summarizing, what I asked is: WHY a new app to do what we already have with a few features more and WHY not to improve konqueror with those new features instead?
And, I'm really curious about it, what's that name? ... Gives (me) absolutely no idea of what is does (not even a clue about what this name is related to - one COULD think of the idea of diving into your files but, being dolphin a manager, not a browser, as you say, not even that)! ...
The thing im missing most in Dolphin is tabbed browsing. The superior feature of Konqueror is tabbed filebrowsing, and I won't use Dolphin without tabs. Without tabs, Dolphin is a regress.
Sorry for the double post, but besides the tab thing, one wonderful konqueror feature is browsing in the web AND browsing my files at the same time is possible, so I can easily switch between managing files and surfing the internet. Another thing (it isn't really related to Dolphin): Oxygen Icons suck.
Thanks for the nice post!
well it's june 2008 now, and I've been trying 'wubi' kubunto for a few days with kde 4, and I have to say that it looks to me like 'KDE 4 is the new Gnome2'.
ie it is a useless pile of rubbish:
* 90% of the configuration items are gone
* what configuration items are left seem to be ignored half the time
* file manager functionality on the desktop is mostly gone
but worst of all is that it seems konqueror IS vanishing. Unlike the rock solid konqueror that everyone is used to, The 'konqueror' included in KDE 4 crashes often, and what's more I got the impression that actually they had rewritten part of its front end to use widgets or classes from dolphin. The tree view seems stuffed and flashes all the time.
I'm not trying to pay it out for crashing all the time. that is understandable. it is probably still beta software or whatever.
what really depresses me though is that it is clear immediately (and still clear after days of using it) that some gnome-lovers have managed to infiltrate the KDE team and subvert it to their pathetic way of thinking. Gone are application preferences dialogs with every option you can want. Instead what we now have is one dialog per application with one or two options to change only the most basic things.
Still the main point of this article was konqueror and my main point here is that whether or not they claim that konqueror has been 'kept' it doesn't matter because it looks like it's been bastardised and buggified so as to make it unusable anyway.
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