Honestly I dislike a lot of the KDE default app names. Default apps should have simple, descriptive names.
The fact that the file explorer is called “Dolphin” instead of just “File Explorer” or “Files” or something descriptive just makes KDE harder to use for no good reason.
I wish I could just easily reconfigure the name and icon of the default apps so it’s fixable at least.
I find it hard to believe “File Manager KDE” would be unsearchable for, given that it already returns results related to Dolphin. I just don’t believe this is difficult at all, sorry.
I shouldn’t have to figure out the file manager is called Dolphin, the name should be descriptive by itself. The fact that you have to rely on the keyword search to figure it out is imo just bad naming.
well if just watched Johnny Pneumonic, you’d know that a dolphin is the best animal for navigating files.
(seriously, watch it).
“explorer” is the name for the windows file MANAGER… but still, whatever name they choose could reflect the thing it does a little better.
while we’re on it, the name “Lemmy” is terrible for this app. Sure, the musician is cool… but has nothing to do with it, and i think a big thing holding it back. (as far as social animals go, Lemmings have a terrible fake legend about running off cliffs together… they don’t do that, but it’s what most people think about).
e.g. Mastodon has been around for years, is actually really federated, not owned by a corporation, and a lot more features than BlueSky… but bluesky already has more users and i think largely because: marketing… how are people going to talk about “Mastodon” when they’ve probably never even heard the word before? (also named after a cool band, but not suitable for the masses).
GIMP is an awful name…
these things usually start as one person’s pet project, and they name it what they want… which is fine but once it starts to gain traction, they should rebrand it.
e.g. Mastodon has been around for years, is actually really federated, not owned by a corporation, and a lot more features than BlueSky… but bluesky already has more users and i think largely because: marketing… how are people going to talk about “Mastodon” when they’ve probably never even heard the word before? (also named after a cool band, but not suitable for the masses).
Also fewer syllables, which apparently has a noticeable impact.
As a normal user…what’s next, “File Manager and Browser coupled with basic Statistic Display by KDE”?
Call it Dolphin and it’s good. If I search “file manager for kde” it will show dolphin. Once I seen it, I know it and it’s hella more memorable than any descriptive word soup you’d have.
What do you think Gnome Seahorse does? What utility function does that small piece of software perform, based on its name? I’ll give you a hint: It directly competes with KDE’s Kleopatra. Did you guess GPG and other encryption key generator/manager? Because that’s what those are for. Not sure how KDE kissed “Keyring.”
I’m not sure if it’s Gnome that started it, but file managers often have a nautical theme. Gnome Nautilus, Cinnamon Nemo, KDE Dolphin…
They never show the names anyways. They just call it “Files”, “Web”… Generic terms that get tons of unrelated search results. They don’t even call it “GNOME Files”, “GNOME Web”, it’s like they want to be the only program on your computer that does that, like they own the concept.
I found more value in knowing which web browser is used because I’ve used my computer more than 5 minutes and know the difference between Firefox and Epiphany. Same with Totem over VLC, etc.
True, but this then applies to all apps. And for some bizarre reason if GenericName is not available the fallback is Comment, so tons of apps turn into a long string of text that gets cut off.
Keyword “easily”. Having to figure out the scheme for those files and where to exactly put them is not user-friendly. And from searching online, there’s vague edgecases that cause it to not get recognized by the task bar properly.
But it is neat trick for those who tinker a bit more I suppose.
right click on a program’s icon in the start menu, like kate.
click “edit application”.
switch to the “application” tab.
change what’s in the “name” field.
click “ok”.
Honestly I dislike a lot of the KDE default app names. Default apps should have simple, descriptive names.
The fact that the file explorer is called “Dolphin” instead of just “File Explorer” or “Files” or something descriptive just makes KDE harder to use for no good reason.
I wish I could just easily reconfigure the name and icon of the default apps so it’s fixable at least.
For me it’s the opposite, generic names make searching for issues on the web stupidly difficult.
No one has problems figuring out that Dolphin is the file explorer, and if you search for “file” in the KDE menu, it returns Dolphin as a result.
I find it hard to believe “File Manager KDE” would be unsearchable for, given that it already returns results related to Dolphin. I just don’t believe this is difficult at all, sorry.
I shouldn’t have to figure out the file manager is called Dolphin, the name should be descriptive by itself. The fact that you have to rely on the keyword search to figure it out is imo just bad naming.
well if just watched Johnny Pneumonic, you’d know that a dolphin is the best animal for navigating files.
(seriously, watch it).
“explorer” is the name for the windows file MANAGER… but still, whatever name they choose could reflect the thing it does a little better.
while we’re on it, the name “Lemmy” is terrible for this app. Sure, the musician is cool… but has nothing to do with it, and i think a big thing holding it back. (as far as social animals go, Lemmings have a terrible fake legend about running off cliffs together… they don’t do that, but it’s what most people think about).
e.g. Mastodon has been around for years, is actually really federated, not owned by a corporation, and a lot more features than BlueSky… but bluesky already has more users and i think largely because: marketing… how are people going to talk about “Mastodon” when they’ve probably never even heard the word before? (also named after a cool band, but not suitable for the masses).
GIMP is an awful name…
these things usually start as one person’s pet project, and they name it what they want… which is fine but once it starts to gain traction, they should rebrand it.
Lol Johnny Pneumonic
i will keep this autocorrect
I think you better fix it, what if ChairmanMeow searches for Johnny Pneumonic?
Also fewer syllables, which apparently has a noticeable impact.
As a normal user…what’s next, “File Manager and Browser coupled with basic Statistic Display by KDE”?
Call it Dolphin and it’s good. If I search “file manager for kde” it will show dolphin. Once I seen it, I know it and it’s hella more memorable than any descriptive word soup you’d have.
The entire point is that I shouldn’t have to memorize what such a basic feature of the distro is called.
We could get best of both worlds and put K before the names.
kfiles kbrowser, kedit, if kde ever made a c compiler for some reason we could name it kcc.
I never understood the GNOME logic rename Totem, Nautilus, Epiphany, etc… Granted, I don’t understand much about GNOME.
What do you think Gnome Seahorse does? What utility function does that small piece of software perform, based on its name? I’ll give you a hint: It directly competes with KDE’s Kleopatra. Did you guess GPG and other encryption key generator/manager? Because that’s what those are for. Not sure how KDE kissed “Keyring.”
I’m not sure if it’s Gnome that started it, but file managers often have a nautical theme. Gnome Nautilus, Cinnamon Nemo, KDE Dolphin…
They never show the names anyways. They just call it “Files”, “Web”… Generic terms that get tons of unrelated search results. They don’t even call it “GNOME Files”, “GNOME Web”, it’s like they want to be the only program on your computer that does that, like they own the concept.
Basically what he said
Epiphany doesn’t automatically tell you what it is
Gnome Web does
Gnome is big in the accessibility community and stuff like this helps
I found more value in knowing which web browser is used because I’ve used my computer more than 5 minutes and know the difference between Firefox and Epiphany. Same with Totem over VLC, etc.
I imagine you aren’t part of the target “accessibility” audience
Because it barely exists
They should just rename Gnome to Desktop Environment and rewrite it in
RustProgramming LanguageThe name “Programming language” is already taken by HTML though
I do now want an “ADE” written in APL
I don’t remember where, but you can configure the app launcher to show the descriptive name instead of the app name by default.
True, but this then applies to all apps. And for some bizarre reason if GenericName is not available the fallback is Comment, so tons of apps turn into a long string of text that gets cut off.
Like, look at this:
Top row is perfect, but then you get to Steam…
In the launcher’s own settings
They are searchable by descriptive names, they shouldn’t have ‘simple, descriptive names’.
you can have overrides for .desktop files, and the name is stored there
Keyword “easily”. Having to figure out the scheme for those files and where to exactly put them is not user-friendly. And from searching online, there’s vague edgecases that cause it to not get recognized by the task bar properly.
But it is neat trick for those who tinker a bit more I suppose.
ok, got it. this applies to KDE Plasma.
right click on a program’s icon in the start menu, like kate.
click “edit application”.
switch to the “application” tab.
change what’s in the “name” field.
click “ok”.
I think this should be doing the same thing
This only works if your distro is set up in a way that allows it. SteamOS doesn’t seem to allow it for example, see https://github.com/ValveSoftware/SteamOS/issues/1744
that seems like a plasma bug made visible by a distro quirk
It probably is, yes. But somehow I feel like I run into all of those bugs :(.
yeah I often feel similarly. like, the KDE Akonadi calendar-contacts-whatnot system is so so buggy
That seems related to it being immutable and is probably something Valve will fix as Bazzite does not have this issue.
I mean it won’t work if you rip out your hard drive either, but usually things are custom managed in those situations by whoever created them.
(Ex. Nixos is the same, but not really a problem cause you expect to manage it within nix)
KDE Menu Editor makes that easier (pretty sure that’s the one for .desktop files)
It doesn’t even have a k in the name!!
I always confuse it with dolphin emulator in my package managers.