{"id":8250,"date":"2019-01-17T01:18:31","date_gmt":"2019-01-17T01:18:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.appservgrid.com\/paw92\/?p=8250"},"modified":"2019-03-08T02:06:06","modified_gmt":"2019-03-08T02:06:06","slug":"essential-system-tools-krusader-kde-file-manager","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.appservgrid.com\/paw92\/index.php\/2019\/01\/17\/essential-system-tools-krusader-kde-file-manager\/","title":{"rendered":"Essential System Tools: Krusader – KDE file manager"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Essential<\/p>\n

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Essential System Tools: Krusader \u2013 KDE file manager<\/h1>\n<\/header>\n
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This is the latest in our series of articles highlighting essential system tools. These are small, indispensable utilities, useful for system administrators as well as regular users of Linux based systems. The series examines both graphical and text based open source utilities. For this article, we\u2019ll look at Krusader, a free and open source graphical file manager. For details of all tools in this series, please check the table at the summary page of this article.<\/p>\n

Krusader is an advanced, twin-panel (commander-style) file manager designed for KDE Plasma. Krusader also runs on other popular Linux desktop environments such as GNOME.<\/p>\n

Besides comprehensive file management features, Krusader is almost completely customizable, fast, seamlessly handles archives, and offers a huge feature set.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Krusader is implemented in C++.<\/p>\n

Installation<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Popular Linux distros provide convenient packages for Krusader. So you shouldn\u2019t need to compile the source code.<\/p>\n

If you do want to compile the source code, bear in mind recent versions of Krusader use libraries like Qt5 and KF5, and don\u2019t work on KDE Plasma 4 or older.<\/p>\n

On one of our vanilla test machines, KDE Plasma is not installed and there are no KDE applications installed. If you don\u2019t currently use any KDE applications, remember that installing Krusader will drag in many other packages. Krusader\u2019s natural environment is KDE Plasma 5, because it depends on services provided by KDE Frameworks 5 base libraries.<\/p>\n

The image below illustrates this point sweetly. Installing Krusader without Plasma requires 36 packages to be installed, consuming a whopping 148 MiB of hard disk space.<\/p>\n

\"Krusader<\/p>\n

The image below offers a stark contrast. Here, a different test machine, \u2018pluto\u2019, is a vanilla Linux installation running KDE Plasma 5. Installing Krusader doesn\u2019t pull in any other packages. Installing Krusader only consumes 14.90 MiB of disk space.<\/p>\n

\"Krusader-KDE-install\"<\/p>\n

Some of Krusader\u2019s functionality is sourced from external tools. On the first run, Krusader searches for available tools in your $PATH. Specifically, it checks for a diff utility (kdiff3, kompare or xxdiff), an email client (Thunderbird or KMail), a batch renamer (KRename), and a checksum utility (md5sum). It also searches for (de)compression tools (tar, gzip, bzip2, lzma, xz, lha, zip, unzip, arj, unarj, unace, rar, unrar, rpm, dpkg, and 7z). You\u2019re then presented with a Konfigurator window which lets you configure the file manager.<\/p>\n

Krusader\u2019s internal editor requires Kate is installed. Kate is a competent text editor developed by KDE.<\/p>\n

Krusader is implemented in C++.<\/p>\n

In Operation<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Here\u2019s Krusader in operation.<\/p>\n

\"Krusader\"<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s break down the user interface. At the top is a standard menu bar which allows access to the features and functions of the file manager. \u201cUseractions\u201d seems a quirky entry.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Then there\u2019s the main tool bar which offers access to commonly used functions. There\u2019s a location tool bar, information label, and panel tool bars. The majority of the window is taken up by the left and right panels. Having two panels makes dragging and dropping files easy.<\/p>\n

At the bottom there\u2019s total labels, tabs, tab controls, function key buttons, and a status bar. You can also show a command line but that\u2019s not enabled by default.<\/p>\n

Krusader\u2019s tabs let you switch between different directories in one panel, without affecting the directory displayed in the adjacent panel.<\/p>\n

Places, favorites and volumes are available in each panel, not on a common side bar.<\/p>\n

Krusader offers a wide range of features. We\u2019ll have a look at some of the stand out features for illustration purposes \u2014 there are too many to go into great detail on them all! We\u2019re also not going to consider basic functions, or basic file management operations, just take them for granted.<\/p>\n

KRename is integrated with Krusader. Another highlight is BookMan, Krusader\u2019s bookmark tool for bookmarking folders, local and remote URLs, and later returning to them in a click of a button.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s built in tree, file previews, file split and join, as well as compress\/decompress functions.<\/p>\n

Krusader can launch a program by clicking on a data file. For example, clicking on an R file launches that document in RStudio.<\/p>\n

With profiles you can save and restore your favorite settings. Several features support profiles, you can have e.g. different panel profiles (work, home, remote connections, etc.), search profiles, synchroniser profiles, etc.<\/p>\n

KruSearcher<\/h3>\n

One of the strengths of Krusader is its ability to quickly locate files both locally and on remote file systems. There\u2019s a General Section which covers most searches you\u2019ll want to perform, but if you need additional functionality there\u2019s an Advanced section too.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s take a very simple search. We\u2019re looking to find files in \/home\/sde\/R (and sub-directories) that match the suffix .rdx.<\/p>\n

\"Krusader-KruSearcher\"<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a separate tab that displays the results of the search.<\/p>\n

\"Krusader-KruSearcher-Results\"<\/p>\n

Of course this is an extremely basic search. You can append multiple searches in \u201cthe Search for\u201d bar, with or without wildcards, and exclude searches with the | character. You also have the option to specify multiple directories to search or exclude, as well as the ability to search for patterns in files (like grep). There\u2019s recursive searching, the option to search archives, and to follow soft-links during a search.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s not the extent of the search functionality. With the advanced tab, you can restrict search to files matching a specific size or size range, date options, and even by ownership.<\/p>\n

\"Krusader-KruSearcher-Advanced\"<\/p>\n

In the bottom left of each dialog box, there\u2019s a profiles button. This can be a time-saver if you often perform the same search operation. It allows you save search settings.<\/p>\n

Synchronise Folders<\/h3>\n

This function compares two directories with all subdirectories and shows the differences between them. It\u2019s accessed from Tools | Synchronise Folders (or from the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Y).<\/p>\n

The tool lets you synchronize the files and directories, one of the panels can be a remote location.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a comparison of two directories stored on different partitions.<\/p>\n

\"Krusader-Synchronise\"<\/p>\n

The image below shows that to synchronise the two directories, 45 files will be copied.<\/p>\n

\"Krusader-Synchronise-Action\"<\/p>\n

The Synchronizer is not the only way to compare files. There\u2019s other compare functions available. Specifically, you can compare files by content, and compare directories. The compare by content functionality (accessed from the menu bar \u201cFile | Compare by Content\u201d) calls an external graphical difference utility; either Kompare, KDiff3, or xxdiff.<\/p>\n

Disk Usage<\/h3>\n

A disk usage analyzer is a utility which helps users to visualize the disk space being used by each folder and files on a hard disk or other storage media. This type of application often generates a graphical chart to help the visualization process.<\/p>\n

Disk usage analyzers are popular with system administrators as one of their essential tools to prevent important directories and partitions from running out of space. Having a hard disk with insufficient free space can often have a detrimental effect on the system\u2019s performance. It can even stop users from logging on to the system, or, in extreme circumstances, cause the system to hang.<\/p>\n

However, disk usage analyzers are not just useful tools for system administrators. While modern hard disks are terabytes in size, there are many folk who seem to forever run out of hard drive space. Often the culprit is a large video and\/or audio collection, bloated software applications, or games. Sometimes the hard disk is also full of data that that users have no particular interest in. For example, left unchecked, log files and package archives can consume large chunks of hard disk space.<\/p>\n

Krusader offers built-in disk usage functionality. It\u2019s accessed from Tools | Disk Usage (or with the keyboard shortcut Alt+Shift+S).<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s an image of the tool running.<\/p>\n

\"Krusader-Disk-Usage-Running\"<\/p>\n

And the output image showing the disk space consumed by each directory.<\/p>\n

\"Krusader-Disk-Usage-Results\"<\/p>\n

We\u2019re not convinced that Krusader\u2019s implementation is one of its strong points. We also experienced segmentation faults running the software in GNOME, although no such issues were found with KDE as our desktop environment. There\u2019s definitely room for improvement.<\/p>\n

Checksum generation and checking<\/h3>\n

A checksum is the result of running a checksum algorithm, called a cryptographic hash function, on an item of data, typically a single file. A hash function is an algorithm that transforms (hashes) an arbitrary set of data elements, such as a text file, into a single fixed length value (the hash).<\/p>\n

Comparing the checksum that you generate from your version of the file, with the one provided by the source of the file, helps ensure that your copy of the file is genuine and error free. By themselves, checksums are often used to verify data integrity but are not relied upon to verify data authenticity.<\/p>\n

You can create a checksum from File | Create Checksum.<\/p>\n

\"Krusader-Checksum\"<\/p>\n

There\u2019s the option to choose the checksum method from a dropdown list. The supported checksum methods are:<\/p>\n