For people who have finally taken the plunge to change from Windows (or Mac) to a Linux distribution and choose the KDE desktop, this is a small introductory How-To on some of the useful features of the Dolphin file system. For what is considered a “lightweight” file system, Dolphin is feature rich with all the functionality anyone could ask for. This article is going to touch on some of the functions that the average user is going to want to explore or take advantage of and maybe even one or two they might not have considered. Lets face it, a lot of people never take the time to explore the file manager and miss out on built in functions that could actually make their lives a little easier. Many of the steps covered here can be accomplished using various shortcut keys, but for those who don’t use these time savers on a regular basis the following steps are based on navigating through the display.
The following image is a screenshot of the basic Dolphin display. Just above the working space on the left is the directory icon with the full path to the current directory from root. Normally, this will be an icon of a blue file cabinet unless a person chooses to create and edit their own directory icons. Above the path is the tool bar which can be configured with regularly used commands.
Navigate up the menu bar at the top and click on View > Panels > Places and the pane shown below on the left will show up. Highlighted is the current directory if it has already been added to the list. To add any directory to this list, simply select the directory and drag it into a location in the list. To remove a directory, right click on the directory in the list and select Remove Entry. I recommend keeping this list short with only the most basic of locations used on a regular basis.
Now navigate back to the menu bar and again through View > Panels > Folders. Right above the shortcut places is now the directory tree which allows at-a-glance view of exactly where a user is in the structure. Similar to the shortcut pane, the current directory is highlighted for fast identification of location. Select any location within the tree to navigate directly there. This view is beneficial to see all the directories, sub-directories and so on when working with a large system and is a lot faster than clicking from directory to directory to directory and so forth.
For people who started using Linux to learn how to get a little deeper into a system than is allowed with a proprietary OS or just want to practice their skills using shell commands, try View > Panels > Terminal. As can be seen at the bottom of the display is now a location where shell commands can be directly entered. This is handy especially for new learners as it allows the user to jump back and forth between using the display GUI (Graphical User Interface) and shell commands. The following link is a really well written guide to the more basic useful commands:
http://linuxcommand.org/index.php
Sometimes users aren’t thrilled with the default settings of the toolbar or they may want to add frequently used functions . With Dolphin, it’s really simple to modify the toolbar to be exactly the way any user would want it set up. Simply navigate to Settings > Configure Toolbars and the following display will open. Changing options in the shortcut toolbar becomes as simple as drag and drop or use the arrows between the two displays to add or subtract to the way that is most comfortable.
Last item of interest for this article is the “preview” option. This is a really neat feature which allows a user to get a quick preview of what lies underneath the directory icon without actually opening the directory. This is particularly handy for photography people or those who sometimes have a tendency to lose things and don’t want to hunt through every folder looking for a particular file of which the name eludes them. The following two images show the difference between non-preview first and preview second.
Non-Preview
Preview
For a more in-depth look and information on Dolphin and all the various features, simply try playing around or go directly to the source.
http://userbase.kde.org/Dolphin/File_Management
