Dolphin vs Konqueror discussion continues

After my post about Dolphin’s move to kdebase several discussions and even flame wars were started. After some time it calmed down again, but now Troy Unrau featured Dolphin and Konqueror in his great series – and the discussions came up again.

I never had so many clicks on one single article in one day as with my Dolphin article. Also, my blog was never before mentioned at an important KDE place like planetkde.org.

On dot.kde.org everything is even worse:
With over 410 comments already the article is one of the most often commented ever (only outreached by KDE 3.1: Well Worth the Wait and Poll: What KDE Feature Do You Most Want? – at the moment).

As usually you have more people complaining than people accepting that. People who like the situation have less likely a motivation to write a comment. The complains you read are similar to the ones I already heard, and you could also read at Aaron’s post (which was a response to mine). Here are some complains in no specific order.

We will be forced to use Dolphin.

This is all wrong. Dolphin will be the default file manager, but you can – of course – change the configuration.

Dolphin is unnecessary, all people use Konqueror anyway.

Afaik there was user testing, and – suprise, surprise – people had problems using Konqueror. Repeat it with me: Konqueror is a power user application. Therefore Dolphin indeed makes sense for beginners or simply for not-power-users.

When there is Dolphin, Konqueror will be dropped because the developers will only concentrate on Dolphin/because only the default apps are developed.

This is dump because it is bare all facts: first, Konqueror is a power user app – and all KDE developers are power users. So most of them will keep an eye on Konqueror and will develop it further. The developers have also needs, you know.
Second, the default status doesn’t say too much about the amount of developers and application gets. Most developers in KDE are interest driven, and in that regard Dolphin and Konqueror attract different developers – because they are doing different things.
And in that area where Konqueror and Dolphin overlap the code base overlaps as well – therefore developers attracted by both applications will most likely work on the code base which is shared, and therefore improve both applications.

This is duplicate effort.

No. This is KDE! So we use kparts, and the file browser base will be shared between Konqueror and Dolphin. The interface of Dolphin will be a different one: dedicated to pure file management, while Konqueror can do everything. They both have different aims and provide a different service, therefore there will hardly be Duplicated effort.

Dolphin is a dead end – it doesn’t even support tree view!

Wrong. The Dolphin currently in svn already has a tree view. But even more important: Dolphin is as the rest of KDE 4, in huge development! There will be much work, fine tuning and development going into Dolphin to make it a real nice polished application dedicated to one single task!
Of course, at the same time Konqueror will be further developed to be the polished power user tool we all expect in KDE 4 🙂

This breaks with the “one task – one applicaition” rule.

This one was rather funny – because there never was such a rule in KDE. Actually, my currently installed KDE comes along with three editors. Not to mention other “double” apps.
But, and there that argument might have its roots, this rule was discussed for KDE 4. And yes, the developers try to reach that aim in several areas. But that doesn’t mean that this is written in stone for the entire KDE or that you have to kill people if someone violates that rule.

Most people should not see this as a thread – they should see it as an advantage. Dolphin will bring new people and new ideas about the idea of file management into KDE.
So, stop whining and think about it again. There is not really much to cry about, because nothing really changed or happened.