this post was submitted on 16 May 2025
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    [–] ChairmanMeow 80 points 4 days ago (6 children)

    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.

    [–] [email protected] 76 points 4 days ago (3 children)

    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.

    [–] [email protected] 15 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

    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.

    [–] ChairmanMeow 24 points 4 days ago (1 children)

    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.

    [–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

    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.

    [–] ChairmanMeow 1 points 2 days ago

    The entire point is that I shouldn't have to memorize what such a basic feature of the distro is called.

    [–] [email protected] 6 points 3 days ago (3 children)

    I never understood the GNOME logic rename Totem, Nautilus, Epiphany, etc... Granted, I don't understand much about GNOME.

    [–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

    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.

    [–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago

    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...

    [–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

    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

    [–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

    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.

    [–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

    I imagine you aren’t part of the target β€œaccessibility” audience

    [–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

    Because it barely exists

    [–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

    It doesn't even have a k in the name!!

    [–] [email protected] 8 points 3 days ago

    They are searchable by descriptive names, they shouldn't have 'simple, descriptive names'.

    [–] [email protected] 32 points 4 days ago (2 children)

    They should just rename Gnome to Desktop Environment and rewrite it in ~~Rust~~ Programming Language

    [–] [email protected] 18 points 4 days ago

    The name "Programming language" is already taken by HTML though

    [–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago

    I do now want an "ADE" written in APL

    [–] [email protected] 21 points 4 days ago (2 children)

    I don't remember where, but you can configure the app launcher to show the descriptive name instead of the app name by default.

    [–] ChairmanMeow 32 points 4 days ago

    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...

    [–] [email protected] 7 points 4 days ago

    In the launcher's own settings

    [–] [email protected] 6 points 4 days ago (1 children)

    I wish I could just easily reconfigure the name and icon of the default apps so it's fixable at least.

    you can have overrides for .desktop files, and the name is stored there

    [–] ChairmanMeow 3 points 4 days ago (2 children)

    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.

    [–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

    KDE Menu Editor makes that easier (pretty sure that's the one for .desktop files)

    [–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

    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

    [–] ChairmanMeow 1 points 3 days ago (3 children)

    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

    [–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

    That seems related to it being immutable and is probably something Valve will fix as Bazzite does not have this issue.

    [–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

    that seems like a plasma bug made visible by a distro quirk

    [–] ChairmanMeow 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

    It probably is, yes. But somehow I feel like I run into all of those bugs :(.

    [–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

    yeah I often feel similarly. like, the KDE Akonadi calendar-contacts-whatnot system is so so buggy

    [–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

    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)

    [–] [email protected] 29 points 4 days ago
    [–] [email protected] 18 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

    is this the drop down terminal thingy?

    [–] [email protected] 43 points 4 days ago (2 children)

    Yes, I think it's called Yukkake

    [–] [email protected] 59 points 4 days ago (2 children)

    yakuake, for "yet another kuake", from "kuake", which is a kde-ification of "quake". because the console in quake dropped down like that.

    [–] [email protected] 25 points 4 days ago (1 children)

    Damn, I posted the Quake screenshot just because it makes me think of that. And TIL it actually comes from there.

    [–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago

    Programmers think like other programmers I guess.

    [–] [email protected] 23 points 4 days ago (1 children)

    That makes a lot more sense now. Love me a project with a fun story behind it

    [–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

    I really need these lore dumps for linux stuff because I will be highly confused at the names. Still can't get over when I learned that GIMP is not just a perverted or derogatory name, but GNU Image Manipulation Program (and I had to look up what GNU meant too... which was named after a song about a gnu, aka wildebeest)

    i do love the personality of FOSS naming, but please give me a short tidbit about the etymology in the about page, or else I'll be forced to do an hour long Wikipedia deep dive because I simply can't help myself!

    [–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

    Here is just the history of vim off the top of my head.

    Ken Thompson wrote ed the editor (pronounced by spelling each letter) and still is the standard text editor in unix. He also worked majorly on original Unix and C.

    You could only see the line you are typing and had to rewrite whole line to change one letter.

    Then Bill Joy wrote ex as an improvement to ed. But wanted to keep improving. As he improved ex it got a visual editor and became vi. (read by spelling each letter) Bill Joy later led BSD Unix.

    Ken Thompson improved vi to make stevie. (for atari ST) There were further improvements and ports like Amiga.

    Stevie wasn't as close to original vi as Steve Kirkendall wanted so he wrote elvis as an alternative improvement.

    AT&T still owned UNIX at the time and famously sued BSD Unix. They had to replace all Unix tools to not get in trouble.

    So even tho Bill Joy who is leading BSD wrote original vi, they had to find an alternative. At first they were gonna use elvis but Keith Bostic wanted a bug-to-bug compatible version and wrote nvi.

    Then in 1991 Bram Moolinar wrote "vi improved" or "vim" for short by basing source code on Amiga's stevie port to raise awareness about Uganda.

    He was also a "benevolent dictator for life" which is a term used for opensource devs that always have the final say in the project. Opensource leaders must be benevolent as disagreements result in forks.

    So far these were mostly few years apart but much later in 2014 vim rejected multithreading and we got the fork neovim which doesn't have a wikipedia page and where my original research stopped.

    Fun fact at the end. The nvi editor was forked in dragonfly BSD with name nvi2 and bsd systems still have nvi.

    [–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago

    There's a similar one named guake.

    [–] [email protected] 13 points 4 days ago

    They knew what they were doing.