Is there any way to make dolphin show the size in bytes of each directory?

Currently it shows the size of individual files in bytes, but the 'size' field for directories displays the number of files contained within that directory.

I understand that this probably wouldn't be suitable as a default behaviour but is configurable as an option?

cheers

spoov

I'd be interested in as well but have never seen it. Is it possible at all?

This would require nepomuk, I made a brainstorm idea about it a while back but I don't think anything happened with it.

So how would one go about doing that with nepomuk? And where can we vote for the brainstorm?

It would need to keep track of the size of the files in every directory it indexes, perhaps as well as the size of the child directories.

To do it without nepomuk, it would require crawling recursively through every directory and reading the size of every file. KDE already does this when you right-click on a folder and click "properties", but it is extremely slow when there are a lot of sub-directories. Linux also has a built-in commandline function called "du", but it is just as slow.

The idea is here: brainstorm.php#idea38874_page1

It deals with the information panel, but the same principles would apply elsewhere.

Great, thanks for that link!

A mate who is gradually coming to appreciate Linux more and more is used to comparing exact byte-size of data sets he moves around and how much disk space they take up - something very easy to do in Windows. I confess to say I was stumped when asked how to do this in Linux, so this may go some way to help

This information is already available in the Properties for each folder. Right click > Properties.

Cheers. The story unfolds - he is apparently using gnome and nautilus has not got this info at all.

Also, in Windows the info is different to Linux, i.e. the number of bytes changes for the same folder - wonder why that is. Also, Windows gives number of bytes and space used on disk (FAT32 in this case). Is this possible? Never mind dolphin or nautilus, what about CLI?

Knowing me, I'm probably very stupid. But I don't see how this fact contributes to the OP's query, which has been solved by bcooksley's reply.

It may be two years later, but this thread has still not been properly answered and the default behavior of the latest version of dolphin vs what was asked remains the same.

toad wrote: ... I don't see how this fact contributes to the OP's query, which has been solved by bcooksley's reply.

bcooksley's reply does not address the OP, which requested the size in bytes show where it should, in the size column in folder view. No one cares about the number of files in a folder, it is irrelevant to file management; Only space on disk matters. This is something even Microsoft had right until Vista or 7, I'm not sure which and I'm not installing Vista again to find out. When they dropped showing folder size in the size column in Explorer for whatever stupid reason they had despite their file indexing now being better than it had been previously, they didn't replace it with the number of files in that folder, because they knew that information was less than no help at all. Even worse, it would give inconsistent results depending on whether your file browser is set to show or hide hidden or system files.

The other worrisome thing to me is these references to "that would require nepomuk", which installs by default with KDE. Dolphin is the default file manager for KDE, and this thread is on KDE.org, so why would we assume people asking for help would not not have default packages installed or, bizarrely, would refuse to install said packages if that was the requirement to properly address their question?

So the status quo answer would appear to be "dolphin does not do this at present". I have filebrowsers in my PHONE that do better, so that's not exactly acceptable anyways, but neither is refusing to come out and say that's just how it is.

"that would require nepomuk" ... well I have nepomuk and I'll bet the OP and almost anyone else who asks about this does as well. Reach into your hat again and find another glove to slap us all with, or provide a response as to whether this is, will, or will never be possible with the dolphin file browser. I will also accept pictures of bunnies, though sadly my opinion is not all that matters here.

toad wrote:So how would one go about doing that with nepomuk? And where can we vote for the brainstorm?

Exactly my questions, though sadly the brainstorm vote is now locked.

k4dirstat, works for me

google01103 wrote:k4dirstat, works for me

Now THAT is what I would call an answer!

For my purposes this evening, this led me to WinDirStat, which succeeds where everything else I had tried today failed(sadly sorting through files on my work PC as I work, OS/AV dictated by the company and all that). Yes I came up with that much bile in one day. What can I say, I work in a call center of sorts.

That said, I still think this would be a killer feature for integration into Dolphin. How hard can it be? k4dirstat pulls it off in 631KB, and that's without any pre-req's like nepomuk, which again is a kde base installed package.