chewearn's blog

Background

This is a quick tip for those using Krusader in Ubuntu Hardy (with Gnome). Krusader is, arguably, the most comprehensive dual pane file manager for Linux.

In Ubuntu, you could install Krusader version 1.90.0 from the universe repository. Unfortunately, this version in Ubuntu suffers an irritating user interface problem. I emphasized the last part of the previous sentence, because this is a deliberate problem introduced by the Krusader developers, and it should not be considered a bug per se (see the explanation below).

The problem

If you open the “Useractions” menu, you are confronted with a gigantic menu.

Explanation

As explained in the bug report here, a large lists of useractions was deliberately included in Krusader version 1.90.0. The reason for doing so was because Krusader v1.90.0 was the last release for KDE3, and the developers wanted to put in the best useractions.

Unfortunately, you can’t permanent delete any of the useractions (to trim down the list) using the “Manage User Actions”. This is a known bug, which has only been fixed in Krusader v2.0 onwards.

Workaround

The workaround is simple. Edit /usr/share/apps/krusader/useraction_examples.xml (with root privilege).

gksudo gedit /usr/share/apps/krusader/useraction_examples.xml

Each useraction is defined using <action> tag. To remove an useraction, delete the corresponding tag and it’s child nodes. E.g. below is the complete useraction entry for “Sort by Name”.

<action name="sort_by_name" >
 <title>Sort by Name</title>
 <tooltip>Sort by Name.</tooltip>
 <icon>view_text</icon>
 <category>User Interface</category>
 <description>Sorts the active panel by Name</description>
 <command>%aColSort(&quot;Name&quot;)%</command>
 <defaultshortcut>Win+1</defaultshortcut>
</action>

To remove this useraction, delete every lines between <action name=”sort_by_name” > and </action> (including the tags themselves).

Personally, I deleted the file completely, as I don’t use any useraction at all.

sudo rm /usr/share/apps/krusader/useraction_examples.xml

That’s it. It is possible there are still a few remaining useractions after the workaround above. You can leave them as they are (since the menu is now smaller), or remove them using “Manage User Actions”.