Hello, I am using kde for one main reason, Dolphin file manager.

It has great samba/windows support. I can type in smb://ip-address or smb://computer-name and press enter and presto, I am browsing that computer's shares.

I like the quickness of lxde and xfce but don't know of a way to browse network shares as quickly as in kde.

For those of you who don't use the slow gnome or kde environments, what do you all do for browsing network shares? I need something that is quick and easy.
-Thanks

Gnome Commander

Check this also.

Ok, so i checked out a bunch but in the end I am sticking with kde and dolphin.

In dolphin, I have several features not found in other file managers.

1. I can make links on the left hand side to samba shared folders
2. I am simply type in smb://server and I see the server's shares
3. Press F4 and you drop into a terminal in the current directory...very useful.
4. I can highlight several directories at once and right click, select properties and see their total storage. Unbelievable how hard it is to find this feature in other programs.
5. I can right click, do open with and select another program.

I hate to say it, but it is the closest in features to windows explorer. All the other file managers I have tried stink compared to this and even compared to windows explorer.

Hi,

you can use dolphin with any other windowmanager than KDE as long you have KDE installed, dolphin uses kdelibs. I use dolphin with Xmonad.

Markus

Does having all the kde libs installed slow your system down?

kdelibs is only one package, that doesn't slow down the system. But there are other issues if one has not all packages of KDE installed, for example does the preview of pictures not work.
As of KDE, if you have it installed you can disable some of the tools, but I think this depends on the distribution, I'm not sure for Kubuntu.

Markus