Move to Dolphin

[dominichayesferen]

Package Name or Section of Feren OS where this bug resides Where does this bug happen? (e.g.: feren-themer-cinnamon) dolphin

Describe the bug Since someone decided to write up #110, I'm gonna make this bug report way earlier than I was intending to make it. The end plan for Feren OS is to switch over to Dolphin, however currently Dolphin is not ready for this.

Feren OS chose Nemo over Dolphin to begin with because of one belief: Choose applications that are user-friendly but also feature-rich and fit in with the rest of the OS (to a degree).

Dolphin's main current issue is its clunky aging GUI design. From the URL bar not being on the toolbar resulting in wasted space and an overall less polished look than all the other file manager of this era, to the clunkiness of the Places sidebar design, there are too many GUI issues with Dolphin, that are front-facing, currently for me to feel happy with replacing Nemo with it.

Main Downsides to Nemo:

• Is GTK-based
• Doesn't work with KDE Connect's shortcuts at all and doesn't integrate with KDE Connect
• Can't handle applications:/ URIs

Main Downsides to Dolphin:

• Too many features
• The GUI looks clunky currently
• Places sidebar could be simplified a ton in layout
• Some terminology might seem unfamiliar (e.g.: "Redisplay" over "Refresh")
• Features like Recent could be merged into one page each rather than 3 or 4 pages for each feature for filtering items in that feature
• A pain in the butt to configure the defaults for (like Kate is, but even more complex)
• No typing file selection feature (ala Nemo) (the closest Dolphin has to this is a Windows-like rendition of this)

So why Dolphin? Many of the downsides I've mentioned seem to be things KDE wants to now sort out. For one, the visual clunkiness might very likely be no more in the future on first impressions if https://phabricator.kde.org/T12308 is anything to go by. Furthermore, with a bit of involvement from me the other issues can be ironed out as well over time.

When Dolphin? The soonest Feren OS will get Dolphin is whenever it receives a version of Dolphin that looks akin enough to the mockups depicted in the link above.

[Sadi58]

I agree. For users who cannot wait until the time when Dolphin, the default file manager of KDE Plasma, will be seen as fit to become also the default file manager of Feren OS, it's just a click away, and with only several minor dependency packages requiring about 50 MB disk space in total. In spite of my addiction with Nemo Scripts as well as its simpler, cleaner GUI design, I've decided to become an early adopter (still keeping Nemo for use with root privileges and scripts - until I can transfer them all). This enabled a trouble-free, complete and smooth integration with the Wastebin Plasmoid and Ark (which I had to replace previously with File Roller for drag'n'drop interaction with file manager). Thanks for the info; I look forward to seeing Dolphin improved soon in that direction!

[Sadi58]

After transferring my Nemo Actions and Scripts to Dolphin, I think I can now do without Nemo in spite of some minor issues with Dolphin. Meanwhile I was surprised to see that OpenSUSE appears to have found a way of making Dolphin run as root as well. I hope the same can be implemented in Feren OS also when Dolphin becomes the default file manager. The Exec command in "org.kde.dolphinsu.desktop" is "dbus-launch dolphin -qwindowtitle "%c" "%u"" but it doesn't work in Feren OS.

[dominichayesferen]

-1 for the Superuser idea. There is a reason why Dolphin was never allowed to run as superuser in recent time.

Besides, who needs that anyway when KIO is going to support letting Dolphin manage stuff with Superuser privileges whenever needed like on Windows and like on Kate on userland?

[Sadi58]

That's even better! I look forward to seeing it implemented! Thanks.

[madmanRB]

I do hope feren ships dolphin by default for one simple reason:

Gnome wants to kill themes:

https://www.osnews.com/story/133955/gnome-to-prevent-theming-wider-community-not-happy/

this means that nemo will look ugly and out of place on KDE as well as other GTK apps.

[AndrewLaganaro]

I was looking around Feren OS twitter when I got here. I was able to modify Dolphin's appearance just with the default Dolphin options, and also some linux theming (the ligthly theme) and I got this result: And this:

All on KDE Neon, I tried to mimic Windows 11 both in color and icons. I don't know if this would be useful at all, but just for you to see Dolphin's potential to be beautiful and fit different theme schemes.

This is why I like Dolphin. (Also, almost forgot...prints are in Portuguese, I'm from Brazil. But it shows the "Libraries" (Bibliotecas) which is nothing more than the personal user's folder with a lot of folders in it, trying to mimic windows "Libraries" too)