Konqueror: the all in one -browser

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Ken Hess
Thursday, November 20th, 2008

Thanks, Ken!
Konqueror the Internet Protocol Client

One of the most interesting and useful features of Konqueror is its ability to act as a client for almost any Internet protocol such as ftp, fish(ssh), smb/cifs, and so on. This is accomplished through the use of KIO plugins referred to as IOSlaves. There is also a long list of local protocols such as audiocd, man, lan, settings, and others. To see a full list of the protocols that are supported, open the KDE Control Center->KDE Components->File Manager->Previews & Meta-Data. You can also check online at:
http://docs.kde.org/stable/en/kdebase/kioslave/index.html.

fish/SSH/SFTP

Konqueror can use its file manager powers to connect securely to a remote host and browse a filesystem, open files, create new files, and so on via fish. To use fish, or any Internet protocol, enter the name of the protocol into the Location field and the name of the host you wish to connect to. Konqueror makes no distinction between fish and sftp for connectivity–the experience is the same for you–a remote file manager.

fish://server
sftp://server

See Figure 8 how Konqueror handles man pages. It makes man page  pleasant to look at and in a printable format as well.

Figure 8: man ps

Local Protocols

• applications
• ar
• audiocd
• camera
• devices
• file
• floppy
• fonts
• lan
• man
• mbox
• media
• programs
• remote
• rlan
• settings
• system
• tar
• trash
• zeroconf
• zip

Taking Konqueror to the Next Level

Do you want the newest features and bug fixes for, or the newest ersion of, Konqueror? This is where it gets a little sticky and offputting for newer users. You have to upgrade KDE to upgrade Konqueror because Konqueror is part of the kdebase tree. If your distribution doesn’t have the latest version of kde packages available via apt-get or yum, then you must resort to compiling from source. At a minimum, you will need the kdebase and kdelibs packages or sources.

Should you decide to upgrade KDE via source, you need the following prerequisites:

• Qt 3.3.2 or higher
• C++ 2.95.x or higher
• bunzip2
• OpenSSL 0.9.6 or higher
• libpcre
• libxml2 2.3.13 or higher

And when you compile KDE components, you will need to do so in this order:

• arts
• kdelibs
• kdebase
• All other KDE packages
• kdeaddons

This order is necessary to meet the dependencies for each package.

Please note that even if you check your prerequisites, you may have to download the sources for one or more and compile them prior to attempting any of the KDE sources. This is especially true on rpm-based systems.

Summary

This article has barely scratched the surface of the capabilities and features of Konqueror but at least now you have an idea of what Konqueror is and what it can do for you. It is the most versatile application I have ever had the pleasure to use. KDE has always been my personal choice for a Linux Window Manager and Konqueror further justifies that choice. To find out everything there is to know about Konqueror, visit the website.

Kenneth Hess is a Linux evangelist and freelance technical writer on a variety of open source topics including Linux, SQL, databases, and web services. Ken can be reached via his website at http://www.kenhess.com.