The KDE desktop environment has Dolphin set as its default file manager. So, if you click on the desktop panel’s Wastebin/Trash icon (which is a plasma widget) a Dolphin window will open to show the wastebin contents. But, although Dolphin is a good file manager, I prefer Krusader. However, when I set Krusader as my default file manager, clicking the desktop’s Wastebin icon results in this error message: ‘Malformed URL trash:/’. How to deal with that?
Showing the wastebin contents – physically located in the folder ~/.local/share/Trash – apparently is tied up to Dolphin. There does not seem to be a way to adapt that. That may be bugging, but it is just a matter of a lacking configuration feature. You can’t have it all.
Configuring Krusader
Being a true Linux application Krusader lets you configure a great deal. The toolbar can be set up completely as you like it, with a long list of actions to choose from, including a ‘Wastebin’ icon with two options: ‘Open wastebin’ and ‘Empty wastebin’.
To add the icon: rightclick the toolbar, select ‘Configure Toolbars’, find the Wastebin icon on the left and add it to your toolbar on the right (‘mainToolBar <krusader>’).
To set Krusader as your default file manager: open System Settings, go to ‘Default Applications’, select ‘File Manager’ and add Krusader as the default.
Now you can view the Trash folder contents in Krusader by using the new toolbar icon, and you can empty the wastebin using the same. The desktop Wastebin (or Trash in some distros) widget will still allow you to empty the wastebin, but it will no longer open the Trash folder.
This is, of course, not a real solution for the ‘malformed url trash:/’ problem, but it is a workable workaround, so to say.
A wee note
To be perfectly honest: trash:/ does work smoother with Dolphin… As I said, you can’t have it all.