Using Konqueror as an FTP Client

Konqueror Logo

As a web developer good FTP clients are a necessity for me. I have to upload the scripts to the server. I used to use gFTP for this. Good client – clean interface, easy to use. But not as powerful as I wanted. Then I found FireFTP – the extension for Firefox – it is a good client. But recently I found that my favorite application, Konqueror, can do it much better than all the other clients.

Didn’t know konqueror could be used as a FTP client? Just copy and paste this FTP URL into the address bar of Konqueror and see for yourself…
ftp://checksoftware.com/

Advantages

The main advantage of using Konqueror as the FTP client is that you are very familiar with it. All the shortcuts, the tricks, you use when browsing through your files are available when you connect to a remote server as well. Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V? The FTP client has got it. What if you want to browse two folders in the remote server at the same time? Konqueror can do it.

2 Pane View

Like many other FTP Clients, you can split Konqueror into two panes(Window->Split View Left and Right). This is perhaps the best way to use Konqueror as an FTP Client.

Konqueror using Split Window Interface

X Pane View

Unlike other FTP Clients, Konqueror goes further than just 2 panes. You can keep on splitting a window to make it ‘just perfect’ for you.

Tabbed View

If paned view is not enough, just open up a new tab – and continue splitting it.

Multiple Protocols – FTP/SFTP/FISH

Konqueror supports many protocols – among which these three are the most important to us…

fish
You can use fish if you have a shell account on the remote server. For example, fish://admin@linkdesk.com would open a connection for user binnyva to a remote server ‘linkdesk.com’.
ftp
File Transfer Protocol – you should be knowing this if you have come this far 😉
sftp
Secure FTP.

Problems

So far I have found only one issue with it – I was not able to configure Konqueror to act as an FTP client properly when I was behind a proxy. I have reasons to believe that it was my fault – but I did spend some time trying. Could someone else confirm this?

Conclusion

Konqueror is the best FTP Client there is. Period.

8 comments

  1. Nice article, I also simply use Konqueror for FTP most of the time and always for SSH access. It does a very nice job. Another very nice Linux FTP client is KFTPgrabber. It’s worth taking a look at it.

  2. I agree with most of your post. Konqueror is a good ftp client, unless you want to transfer a large amount of files. For simple file transfers of just a few files it is great. But when you try to transfer a substantial amount of files it has to ‘count’ them or whatever its doing. It also does not resume. period.

    So not quite the best ftp client but worth knowing that it has that capability.

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