First off I will say that Dolphin is far and away the best file manager I've ever used on any computer, any OS - to almost "addictive" levels. I notice this when using OS-X/Finder or Xfce/Thunar or Cinnamon/Muffin(?) or Windows/Explorer. That said, I am a bit perplexed with an issue I've been having for a couple of months.

Every time I double-click on a folder (link or actual) that is on my desktop (KDE 4.14.2, Mint 17.3, kernel 3.16.0-38~generic) Dolphin has an odd behavior. It opens the first/focus tab to "/home/<me>/Documents/Desktop_Stuff/" and a second, "background" tab to whatever desktop folder I clicked on.

I've tried this with links to folders, as well as actual folders (created on the desktop). Same behavior: open the "Desktop_Stuff" in the left/active tab, and the clicked-on folder/link in the right/inactive tab.

If I just click the Dolphin icon in the panel, or run it from the CLI, it opens normally (one window / tab). The issue only happens on opening Dolphin via a double-click on desktop folders.

Any guesses?

myrkat wrote:If I just click the Dolphin icon in the panel, or run it from the CLI, it opens normally (one window / tab). The issue only happens on opening Dolphin via a double-click on desktop folders.

Any guesses?

By default, KDE uses *single* click to open files/folders.

You can change that in Dolphin's settings, and/or in Systemsettings->Input Devices->Mouse.

wolfi323 wrote:By default, KDE uses *single* click to open files/folders.

You can change that in Dolphin's settings, and/or in Systemsettings->Input Devices->Mouse.

Sorry, I should have clarified, I do have it set for double-clicking to open. Besides, if it was a double-tap on a single-click, it would open two of the same item. I'm getting the folder I'm opening PLUS another folder that is not even on the desktop.

Sounds as if dolphin is invoked like
dolphin "~/Documents/Desktop_Stuff/" "/the/path/i/wanted/to/open/"
what likely means that (at least folderview) doesn't invoke a service that looks like
dolphin %U
but like
dolphin "~/Documents/Desktop_Stuff/" %U

run "kcmshell4 filetypes" and look at inode/directory and what it's bound to (and what that is configured like)
If that's unspectacular, check the folderview configuration (no KDE4 and never used folderview; no idea whether a specific service can be used as override here)