Who Says Penguins Can't Fly?

Ever noticed this? I didn’t until today.

I remember reading about showing the file progress in icons some time ago and thought “that would be neat, but will probably take some time until it’s done.” Guess if I was surprised when I saw this today. I usually set the icon zoom level to 32×32 pixels, so maybe that’s why I didn’t notice until now. KDE rocks!

After a little search I found that this was done by Shaun Reich as part of a SoK (Season of KDE) project. There is also a Brainstorm idea about it. (Next question is, how did I miss that it was marked as Done?)

Now it would be nice if it was clearer for small icons, and if possible, showing the file progress would be incredibly neat.

Update October 4, 2010: More information can be found here:

• SoK Project – Showing Job Progress In Icons
• Progress In Icons — Status Update

How can I see this?

Open Dolphin or Konqueror. If you have small icons, zoom in (Ctrl++ by default). Next, copy a large file/folder into a folder and watch the icon of that folder.  (If you copy it to /home/foo/bar, you need to be in /home/foo to see it.) The easiest way is to drag and drop a file over the folder and choose “Copy Here”.

Probably requires KDE Software Compilation >= 4.5, but I’m not sure since today is the first time I’ve seen it.