Comment 4 for bug 98788

The shortcut Sarah mentions is better exposed in Konqueror. Konqueror adds an extra entry into its "Edit" menu that lets you bypass the trash when deleting files permanently.

Unfortunately, dolphin which is the default filemanager for KDE 4.x only supports this when the user knows about it key shortcut, but doesn't provide an extra item in its "Edit" menu.

This would be a great improvement for less tech savvy users who might not be able to delete large folders since they don't fit into the Trash.