Running openSUSE 13.1.
Since I upgraded to 13.1 from 12.3, Dolphin has developed one highly annoying trait: every time I rename a file, as soon as I hit Enter to complete the action, Dolphin highlights several other files in the directory, possibly all files in the directory. So I usually have to click in the directory to release the highlighted files before I can take the next action. This also happens whenever I extract an archive in the directory. This is dangerous because I could extract an archive, then delete the archive by habit and if I were to do so without releasing the other highlighted files I could delete all of them. So I have to be very careful when extracting archives.
Is this a known bug with Dolphin or KDE in 13.1? Is there a fix or a workaround? I do a lot of file downloads and file renaming and it’s extremely annoying to have to clear the unwanted highlighting after every file action.
Temporarily create a new user account
Login there and test to see if the same happens
FYI: It’s not happening for me
OK, finally got around to creating a new profile. I tested it, seemed to be fine.
So I copied over most of profile files I figured had nothing to do with the problem. And of course took ownership of all the other files under the new user name. Had to rebuild the menus as some of the menu entries I had customized were missing.
All in all, at least four or five hours of work.
Logged in as the new user to start work again.
And the problem is instantly back…
I download a file. I rename it. Dolphin select all the rest of the files in the directory…
Anyone got any other ideas? Otherwise, it’s back to a clean reinstall. I should have learned NEVER do an upgrade…Upgrades have only worked a couple times for me in the past and that made me sloppy enough to think they would continue to work…
Maybe the copying of something in the profile settings that you copied over is the issue?
A clean install will make no difference. As you have demonstrated the clean user profile was OK, so the buggy bit is in your profile and you must have copied it over.
Actually I’m not sure I did demonstrate the clean user profile was OK. It doesn’t happen all the time. It’s not clear what triggers it. I suspect the problem was still there before I copied over some of the profile files. I definitely did not copy the dolphinrc file - but I did compare the two and they were identical, anyway. So it wasn’t that file that is the problem.
This is the big problem with KDE. Unless one is willing to burrow deep into the source code for KDE - because the documentation sucks - it’s impossible to figure out where any given problem lies. On Windows, there are so many people burrowing through the system, problems tend to get identified or at least resolved - not always, of course, I’ve seen plenty of Windows problems NEVER get resolved. But KDE is worse is that respect, because I would have to spend weeks burrowing through what little documentation there is online to even begin to know where to look for this problem.
And it may not even be a KDE problem. My system hardware is going on six years old, and I suspect issues with the video hardware support. Last night, MPlayer took down the desktop. This has been a recurring problem with VLC, and I eventually uninstalled VLC because of it. Now MPlayer has done it - albeit this is the first time. I think the kernel and KDE have just moved “beyond” my hardware and whatever bugs exist between KDE and the video card are simply never going to be resolved. I had video problems under 12.3 and earlier using the NVidia proprietary drivers and could even boot with the nouveau drivers, and when I upgraded to 13.1 the nouveau driver seemed to be fine - except for the continual crashing caused by VLC. But now MPlayer has done it. Clearly the interface between Linux, KDE, the video drivers and my video hardware simply are incompatible. I’ve considered dumping the existing card and replacing it because of this. Either that or KDE is simply still too buggy to be completely reliable.
I’m just going to give up until the next release and do a clean install next time, wiping out the profile directory. That will mean doing all the tweaks all over again, but that’s the price one pays for not being able to do a clean upgrade. Maybe I’ll just bite the bullet and do it now. I hate having to do this because I need to get some things done so it’s probably better I put up with this relatively minor annoyance in Dolphin.
Maybe I’ll uninstall and reinstall Dolphin and see if that helps. I suspect the problem is not really in Dolphin, however, but in how Dolphin works with KDE. If so, nothing will fix this short of a full reinstall.
It seems unlikely that all you mentioned are linked.
There are distros available that run older kernel etc… Mint 13 is LTS and Mepis is still on a oldish release, might be worth seeing if the problem exists with such releases?