Thanks for this. Unfortunately it doesn’t sound like what I am looking for.
I like to double click to Open a file, i.e. properly, with the correct favourite program. But to have a quick peek to see/check what it is, the space bar preview is excellent and now an integral part of my workflow. Mac does it, and Gnome does it. I was hoping KDE Plasma did it too, quite surprised it doesn’t as everything else about it so far seems really intuitive and slick.
At this point, since I have customised Gnome a fair bit (key combos, Pano for clipboard, bottom bar instead of dock…) I may just have to stick with Gnome as the lesser of two evils
Thanks again though
Quick question, still playing with KDE Plasma here on old machine. One thing has me totally stumped.
In Dolphin file manager, when I hover on the folder icons I see a + sign. If i click it, it turns into a - sign. but nothing else happens. I assumed it should expand the folder (if there are sub folders). So I made a sub folder inside Pictures, then clicked on that plus sign on the Pictures folder icon, but nothing happens, it doesn’t expand. What is this plus/minus sign thing for?!
I am not a KDE user, but here’s what I’ve found to be close to what you’re looking for.
In Dolphin, by pressing F11, you get a preview of the selected file. The same can also be reached in open/attach dialog windows. Increasing the size of the dialog window and dragging the vertical separator to the left increases the size of the preview image. Also, the size of the dialog window is persistent, remaining the same after you close and reopen the app invoking it. I’ve tested it with LibreOffice Writer, so I assume it works with other apps the same way.
That is actually used for multiple selection. It spares you to use some key combinations. With + one selects files/folders, and with - cancels the selection.
Thanks. I’ve played around with that but can’t get used to it, just takes up so much screen space to keep that preview column always displayed. I’d rather just have files/folders displayed and a press of space bar pops it open if/when needed. I’ll keep hunting thanks. At this point, i think Gnome is looking very much like the lesser of two evils, ESPECIALLY if I can work out how to install Rastersoft / Desktop Icons NG · GitLab
I do SO wish they’d have a ‘dumbfeck’ button where it actually tells non-coders HOW to bloody install something!!
OOOH!! thanks. I asked AI (which I rarely do) and it said it should expand the folders. Screw AI, humans rock, especially smart ones
Actually, i remembered I have ‘Extensions Manager’. I searched and found the Desktop Icons NG extension and installed it.
Now I just have to work out how the hell to use it!
Is there a way to Show Desktop in Gnome? I know it doesn’t natively support any functional ‘Desktop’, but hoping there’s a way to see it so I can drop icons/folders on there?
In Settings → Keyboard → Keyboard Shortcuts → Navigation there is the keyboard shortcut option called Hide all normal windows. It is disabled by default, so you’ll have to set a custom one.
I am probably hoping for too much here, but I now have a nice keycombo to expose the desktop. What would be even better is a ‘hot corner’ (mac speak perhaps), so I can move my mouse to a corner (or click an icon in system tray maybe, as a second best) to do the same thing.
Do you know of any way to set that up?
thanks again, such a relief to see my desktop and have folders/files there for temp usage/organisation
When playing with KDE Plasma this morning I noticed a nice feature, where Gnome can tile windows when dragging left/right/up, in KDE you can do that to corners, to fit 4, one per corner. That’s really nice. Is it possible to make that happen in Gnome by any chance?
GNOME apps are GTK (graphic user interface toolkit) and libadwaita (style) apps made my GNOME.
These are mostly all apps preinstalled on Workstation, apart from mediawriter, firefox, thunderbird.
GNOME apps nearly all have different names shown, than they are actually called as packages, which is a huge pain
video player - totem
files - nautilus
image viewer - loupe
…
sudo dnf group remove workstation-product-environment
This might work, but as said this is optional once you decided to only use KDE stuff.
I am on Kinoite, which is a very minimal Fedora KDE install, and use a ton of GTK and GNOME apps as flatpaks. they work great, no issues. You can absolutely use GNOME apps on KDE too, I have quite a few that I prefer.
KDE has a clipboard manager by default, which is a total must have for me.
Keyboard shortcuts and a lot more can be configured in the systemsettings.
You can also reset settings to default in systemsettings, chapter by chapter. For example just reset the keyboard shortcuts
I believe it will resolve that. I’ll try it in a bit.
Dolphin does not seem to have that, let alone KDE’s filepicker. Someone is working on this, but I expect it to take a while.
I don’t know about pano, but KDE has its own clipboard manager. It appears on the panel once you copy something. Also Meta+V will bring up the clipboard whever you are, so you don’t need to reach for the panel. You can edit the contents of the clipboard and other things, it’s very cool.
Pretty much every shortcut can be customized in KDE.
sudo dnf install elementary-files. You could also use GNOME Software, but you might need to just search for files without the word elementary. These generic names can be annoying sometimes…
Multiple selection; try clicking + on multiple files.
I don’t think there is such an option natively. There is only the top left corner option, set up to show the activity overview.
Again, I think you’ve hit the limits of what GNOME offers OOTB. There is only the left/right split, as well as the option to maximize horizontally/vertically, but no quarter split of windows[1].
You might find some extensions that could do what you’re asking but, as always, one should be cautious with extensions, as some of them can cause performance and stability issues.
You should not give up hope though. Even Mac only introduced it with its latest OS release ↩︎
I looked up Kinoite, so you’re using an Atomic version. I thought that was more for beginners like me to prevent breaking the system, not for advanced users as you surely are
I can’t even remember why now, but I started out with favouring Flatpaks, probably for permissions/security/privacy reasons (I can’t remember now). I do remember having problems with some apps (Brave, possibly Thunderbird too, but that was a flatpak from Fedora Repo, Flathub works better), they couldn’t do certain things due to their isolation. I am tending to favour RPMs now just to avoid any further headaches.
I notice Kinoite favours (enforces?) Flatpaks OOTB.
I do wonder if I should try an Atomic version. Two things appeal to me:
1 ‘you will always have a working system’
2 ‘you can rollback to last version’.
However, whether I (EYE) am capable of ‘rolling back’ or not remains to be seen.
I’m having a real dilemma between Gnone and Plasma now.
SO much about KDE Plasma just ‘fits’ my style and habits, it looks and feels nice. But the learning curve scares me off a bit as so short of time, and the lack of space bar preview is pretty much a deal breaker. I am forced to choose between
A) Gnome, which now I have desktop visible and usable, is WAY nicer.
B) Plasma, feels better to look at, seems nicer for customisation (i love my own fairly unique keyboard combos, and I’d really love to manually set up a Mac keyboard if that were possible), but I know I will have to spend time setting it up. For exampl, Pano clipboard manager. Plasma’s looks awesome, but different, and learning new stuff is hard with so little spare time right now.
Ok, I’ve given this huge dilemma a lot of thought.
Thanks to the help above (mainly the idea that spacebar preview in dialogues may be working in F41, plus the beautiful now usable DESKTOP I have!! I’m way too excited about that!) I now feel I can make a better go with Gnome. There’s still stuff I don’t like (seems a bit too minimalist for my anal retentiveness!) but it’s definitely workable.
I would still like a REAL trial of KDE Plasma though. I’ve installed it on my old imac, but I need to be able to try using it properly, i.e. with my daily browser tasks, thunderbird/email tasks, calendars/tasks etc etc.
So… I am now thinking of how best to try using it on my current F40 Gnome laptop. I know some made suggestions about this above, but I am hoping for a clarification on WHETHER this is doable without me frigging my system, and also hoping that it can be tried and I can completely undo/remove it without remnants screwing up Gnome if I go back to that.
I think the best advice was an idea of installing Kde Plasma for a new user. But will that user be able to use my thunderbird etc? Or will it be a clean slate, much like it is on the imac?
I really wish I could just switch to using it for a day or two, then switch back, but cleanly without messing up my system, files, settings etc in Gnome, in case I want stick with that after the trial.
Is there any way to do this? If so, I just hope it’s within my abilities, which is unlikely methinks! But hey, I’m game! I really need to have my files and stuff inside KDE to fully know if I can use it fluently and, perhaps, even better than Gnome.
In trying to be brief, my description was short on details. I’ll try to clear up some details below. I also suggest searching for “krusader image viewer.” I’ll attempt to upload an image, but I’m new to this forum and may screw up.
For viewing images, there is also an arrow at the bottom right, just above the tabs of each side that opens a new pane, splitting the original pane in half. At the top of the new one there are 4 icons. Click the second or third one to display images. Images will be displayed when selected by a click, with the arrow keys, or the space bar. The pane can also be oriented to top, bottom, right, or left with a second icon that appears at its bottom when the pane is created. It can also be resized to occupy the entire area of the original pane. A new tab could be opened at the bottom and the new pane could be used solely as an image viewer.
I often default to qiv only because, once it’s set as default, a double click is quicker than creating the new pane mentioned above. Once the default applications are adjusted to your preference, files are then opened with a double click. Most applications settings are acceptable, but I’ve found that if a new application is installed, the default is changed to that application in some instances, hence the need to reset in some cases (I remember installing Photoshop on Windows and was very frustrated when the system defaulted to loading that huge program instead of a quick image viewer.) Also qiv is never automatically set as the default in my experience.
If you have any more questions, let me know. Krusader is the most convenient file manager I’ve found in over 30 years of using computers, and I think it’s worth trying. You can always uninstall it if you choose.
