My first file manager on Linux was Konqueror. Compared to anything I at that time it was by far the best thing I’ve ever used. So many options, so many customization features and so many ways to find out information about your files. Looking at it today, I still think it is still by far the best file manager (plus) out there.
The basic openSUSE Tumbleweed installation does not include Konqueror by default but it is available in the main repository. To install enter this in the terminal:
sudo zypper install konqueror konqueror-plugins
Be sure to install the “konqueror-plugins”. Without the plugins, Konqueror doesn’t have that particularly special functionality so I recommend the plugins package.
When you start Konqueror, you are greeted with a pleasant little introduction which tells you a little bit about what Konqueror can do. The more you learn how this software works, the more you discover what you can accomplish with it. Click through the introduction to get acquainted with the product then get to work.
Konqueror has all the fine functions of a file manager, web browser and can be used as a universal document viewer. More on that last part later. I want to initially focus on the file management capabilities of Konqueror.
This isn’t anything that Dolphin, the default KDE Plasma file manger can’t do. In fact, in comparison, there are things Dolphin will do that Konqueror does not by default. To compare the two, Dolphin has side panels for quick links to places, recently saved work and details about whatever file has been selected. Konqueror does not have this.
Most basic file management will work just fine in Dolphin. Where the difference really comes in is with the plugins and some additional or more advanced built in features. The feature that stands out most is the File Size Viewer, a graphical breakdown of files, larger to smaller and the size they take up relative to the overall whole of the directory in question. It sorts the directories by size so at a glance you can see what is taking up your disk space.
I have yet to see this particular feature in any other file management tool. From what I can tell, this feature stands alone and it is absolutely fantastic. It is not a daily feature but it often comes to play when I am analyzing the contents of a disk or when I have to periodically go through and clear out information from my Google Drive so that I don’t go over on my piddly 100GB allotment. I also use this to periodically look at what is taking up the most space. In my case, I have a bunch of VMs on my drive cluttering things up.
The next rather fantastic feature of Konqueror is the ability to make your time managing files productively enjoyable. It has the ability to split up the window into panes where each pane can be where ever you want it to be and view them how you want them to be viewed. You can even open up a Terminal Emulator. I have used this to monitor Rsync operations. If you do file transfers with webdav, ftp, sftp and so forth, this will give you a great way to manage files.
But wait, there’s more!
Each of those panes can be changed to show file locations as you see fit. I can have a File Size View, Detailed View or even just open up another terminal emulator. To the untrained eye, I can give the illusion that I am way smarter and more productive than I actually am.
Konqueror also has a real decent web browser. It is a very capable browser and can be another tab in the same window. It uses either the default KHTML rendering engine or optionally Webkit. I don’t use it as a browser so much lately as Falkon has largely taken that role away but when I want to look at a page with an alternate browser, Konqueror is the tool I use.
The last bit I am going to cover is the ability to embed other applications within Konqueror. Applications like Okular, the document viewer, can open up a PDF or picture as a tab within Konqueror. Any application that supports KParts can be used within Konqueror. Combine that capability with the ability to split the Window into panes and your desktop really becomes like clay, a piece of digital organization art and productivity to dazzle the masses.
Final Thoughts
Konquoror doesn’t get talked about much and that is unfortunate. It is an awesome application with great capabilities. It is almost like what Chrome / ChromeOS is trying to be but just doesn’t quite hit the mark. Chrome’s version of a file browser is dismal at best. Konqueror does everything in these nice neat, little, flexible containers but with fewer system resources than what you would see on Chrome. With multiple tabs open of file management, web pages and an embedded document viewer, It is still using less than 300 MB of RAM.
Admittedly, I tend to use Dolphin and Falkon more frequently than Konqueror. Dolphin for the side pane functionality and Falkon tends to to a better job of rendering pages than Konqueror. When it comes to serious file management, where I really need to dig in and do some heavy [file management] lifting, Konqueror still reigns supreme.
Enjoyed your article – I still use konqueror as my main web browser. Webkit has now been replaced by Webengine – which gives a better web experience.
I’m glad you enjoyed it. I will have to look and see what is available today on my openSUSE Tumbleweed system. There may be some additional packages that will provide the “Webengine” engine. Thanks for sharing!
Greetings,
I’ve been using konqueror for many years and it has always had a side panel. It’s one of the many options along with a midnight commander profile.
iomari
My mistake. I actually haven’t used it recently. The profiles have been removed so ti doesn’t have the sidebar anymore.
With or without the side panel, still awesome. Thanks for sharing!
Probably a silly question but could an OS use something like Konqueror instead of Chrome or Chromium as the desktop GUI?
Do you mean as in ChromeOS? I’m sure that would be possible with enough effort but you wouldn’t have that extension ecosystem.
Glad to see they’re bringing file management back. Back after 16.08.2-1.1 somebody decided konqueror didn’t need usable features and really took an axe to file managment.
That side panel you mention as an advantage in dolphin, konqueror used to have one too with a thin side menu that let you swap it between bookmarks, navigation tree and about 3 other things that I don’t remember at the moment. It was very slick.
It drives me crazy when they cut out the all the useful functionality and call it a “new” version. That kind of action should be called a fork, not an interation/improvement. Same thing happened with Kaffiene/Amarok when they went from kde3 to kde4. To this day those apps don’t have the functionality they had back in kde3.
ok time to go take my rant pills 🙂
glad to see the konquerors are thinking about files again because they were the best at it.