v24.12 of Dolphin was released a few days ago, and thanks to some long-awaited merges, the Places bar is now something you can focus (as a toggle) with Ctrl+P. This is amazing if you want to keep your hands on the keyboard, - no more mouse-wiggling or tabbing to hell and back to get to your locations.
It still blows my mind that Plasma achieves more in terms of improvements than other platforms get close to, even after years. Give Ctrl+P a go, - it just smoothens out file management when switching between places.
For years and years, I have shied away from graphical file managers, because I can do things a lot faster in the CLI with pattern matching, but when I do fire up a file manager, it’s usually Dolphin. (Likeness to certain commercials intended, but also true).
Agreed, cli (and Konsole) for me, still reign supreme, but when it comes to managing non-config files, Dolphin just makes things seamless. Really like that F4 just shoots up a terminal straight in the folder that you’re working on, which gives you the best of both worlds!
KDE really is just about the best overall desktop experience. At least in my humble opinion. I mean the improvements that have been made these past several years are ACTUAL IMPROVEMENTS, not just change for the sake of change.
I thought Baloo was separate to Dolphin although Dolphin uses it. That said, I never seem to have the problems other people have Baloo. Maybe it’s because I don’t index any file contents.
. But it is quite good besides some baggage like that.