KDE Plasma 6 Default Behavior Is Now Double-Click For Opening Files/Folders

[phoronix]

Phoronix: KDE Plasma 6 Default Behavior Is Now Double-Click For Opening Files/Folders

Nate Graham is out with his weekly KDE development summary to highlight all of the interesting changes to this open-source desktop environment with Plasma 6 development continuing at full-speed ahead...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/KDE-Plasma-6-Double-Click

[szymon_g]

It only took them like 15 years to set a sane default setring

[Sonadow]

I'm quite fond of the single-click-to-open option. Have been using that in Windows ever way back in Vista.

If I'm still on desktop Linux by then I'll change it back to that option.

[Danny3]

Great!
But they should also switch "open folders and files" to "By clicking icon or name" from the default "By clicking anywhere on the row".
As that was good in theory, but in practice it is very annoying.

[SigHunter]

Great!
But they should also switch "open folders and files" to "By clicking icon or name" from the default "By clicking anywhere on the row".
As that was good in theory, but in practice it is very annoying.

what is annoying about it? I see only benefits

[ssokolow]

what is annoying about it? I see only benefits

The problem is that it's not just the described behaviour. There are a lot of interconnected behaviours which widgets apply to things, so, by making the entire row the active region for the file/directory name, you're either making applications inconsistent or breaking those associations in all your applications.

For example, I can't remember if/how I can change that setting to test in my Dolphin for Kubuntu 20.04 LTS, but I can point out a couple of examples off the top of my head which I remember getting frustrated by in some implementation or other:

1. In Dolphin as I have it configured, clicking and dragging on the filename begins a click-drag of that file (eg. for copying/moving/symlinking), while clicking and dragging on another column begins a rubber-band selection operation.
2. Dolphin's widget focus management isn't mind-readingly good, and I sometimes I need to focus the folder contents widget without altering the selected files. Currently, I just click in a column other than the filename one. (Typically when I'm flipping focus back and forth between the address bar and arrow+modifiers manipulation of the contents, such as for certain kinds of keyboard-heavy copy-past operations.)
   This is also something that's annoying on YouTube, where I have to tip-toe around to find a region I can click to give keyboard focus back to Firefox's content pane so keyboard shortcuts will work without it aborting video playback and navigating me to either another video or YouTube's login page.
3. Having that separation between the filename column and other columns also enables a clean separation between drag-and-drop-to-open-with and drag-and-drop-to-copy/move-into-this-folder. It's not as big a problem in Dolphin, where drag-and-drop-to-open-with only works for .desktop files anyway, but it's quite annoying on the Windows 7 gaming machine I recently cobbled together out of hand-me-down and spare parts and I wonder if user testing of that exact behaviour on folders full of .EXE files is why Windows has a tooltip-esque indicator of what will happen if you release the drag.
   (Seriously, to drop a file into D:\Installers (where D: is BACKUPS) and not have it interpret it as "Use GOG.com installer B to open GOG.com installer A as a document", I have to hit tiny little 5px border regions between the columns. Friendly to Fitts's Law it ain't.

(And, before anyone tries to attack my choice to not run Linux on it like when I mentioned said gaming machine elsewhere, I've been daily-driving Linux for 20 years. What would you do with a hand-me-down HP prebuilt mid-tower PC that's too bulky for "embedded" uses and can't be upgraded beyond the 8GiB of RAM it came with besides shoving a beefier PSU and an old Radeon in it that were gathering dust in the closet, throwing down $45 CAD for a DVI/USB KVM switch, and dual-booting Batocera and the Windows 7 it came with as an "I'm too tired to wrestle with Wine and gamemoderun and just want things to work" not-a-console?)

[Kemosabe]

what is annoying about it? I see only benefits

I don't see a benefit in using my mouse button twice as often. Mice only live that long too ....
What exactly is the benefit here?

[skeevy420]

(And, before anyone tries to attack my choice to not run Linux on it like when I mentioned said gaming machine elsewhere, I've been daily-driving Linux for 20 years. What would you do with a hand-me-down HP prebuilt mid-tower PC that's too bulky for "embedded" uses and can't be upgraded beyond the 8GiB of RAM it came with besides shoving a beefier PSU and an old Radeon in it that were gathering dust in the closet, throwing down $45 CAD for a DVI/USB KVM switch, and dual-booting Batocera and the Windows 7 it came with as an "I'm too tired to wrestle with Wine and gamemoderun and just want things to work" not-a-console?)

Well, first I'd have to make videos about how I love my country, nature, freedom of choice, and guns to really set the scene.

Then I'd need to put an NVIDIA GPU in the PC, install Linux, go to some pristine location during Golden Hour, and make a video that belittles and hates on anyone who chooses to use NVIDIA and Linux together, shoot my PC into tiny bits of debris to show how tough and bad ass I am, and then I'll leave the location without picking up the destroyed bits of PC because freedom and guns are more important than nature.

That's the American Republican answer.

Unfortunately, I look too much like Steve from Gamers Nexus going through the process of male pattern baldness to pull off some Colbert-like ironic Republican character. If you look more straight-laced, then there you go

[SigHunter]

I don't see a benefit in using my mouse button twice as often. Mice only live that long too ....
What exactly is the benefit here?

He and I were talking about the " clicking anywhere in the row" feature in dolphin for selecting/opening

[Sonadow]

(And, before anyone tries to attack my choice to not run Linux on it like when I mentioned said gaming machine elsewhere, I've been daily-driving Linux for 20 years. What would you do with a hand-me-down HP prebuilt mid-tower PC that's too bulky for "embedded" uses and can't be upgraded beyond the 8GiB of RAM it came with besides shoving a beefier PSU and an old Radeon in it that were gathering dust in the closet, throwing down $45 CAD for a DVI/USB KVM switch, and dual-booting Batocera and the Windows 7 it came with as an "I'm too tired to wrestle with Wine and gamemoderun and just want things to work" not-a-console?)

I would download the Windows 11 ISO, put it into that computer, use a known registry mod to install in on that old machine, run Windows Update on it post-installation, and call it a day.