Review of 8 Linux file managers to try (2015) | Hacker News Reader

Review of 8 Linux file managers to try (2015)

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32 pointstype036 comments

This is an example of where the ecosystem is extremely inefficient - instead of having one great file manager we have a bunch of defective ones.

Is that true? I've never noticed a way in which the default Gnome file manager is any worse than the file manager on Windows.

And with window managers I see the opposite being true. The churn and diversity of *nix window managers lead to a bunch of features being developed, the bugs worked out, and eventually becoming standard that still aren't present in Windows. And those of us who are willing to invest some learning time get to use things like tiling managers.

I miss tree view a lot. They have their vision but it's one feature that should at least be opt-in. Other than that it's great.

As a long-time Dolphin user, I can't help but disagree. When I go back to Windows' Explorer or Mac's Finder, the lacking features irritate me. Dolphin's information density is just right, its URL bar has just the right blend of point-and-click and tab-completion to it, its drag-and-drop gives you the choice between copy and move, you can right-click compress and decompress archives and its contextual actions are exhaustive (open terminal here, install font, …), and it plays well with remote directories (ftp, samba).

The only time it disappointed me was when I wanted to open an FTPES directory, but the bar is high.

"Great" can mean different things to different people e.g., some may prefer zsh and emacs while most iOS users can be unaware of the "filesystem" concept at all.

Are there any good file managers? At least on Linux there is the choice. I find OS X's finder and Windows' explorer pretty awful.

On Windows there's Directory Opus which is really powerful, Total Commander is also really great. On OS X there's Pathfinder which is pretty good.

Funnily, Directory Opus got its beginning on Amiga.

Directory Opus is great, but it is expensive. Last time I checked it was 70 dollars for one computer and that doesn't include "major" updates which seem to happen fairly frequently.

I'll add Clover (http://ejie.me) to this list. It slaps WebKit onto the stock Explorer, giving you tabs, bookmarks, and some nice keyboard shortcuts.

I use XYplorer on Windows. It is heavily customizable, which has allowed me to turn it into the File Manager I always wanted. The free version has everything I need, the pro version adds some features like scriptability.

On Android, I am using X-plore (free again), which is also very innovative (it takes a bit to understand its design philosophy), customizable again, and very good. Only issue I see with it is that whenever it is running, battery drain is measurably higher. Thankfully it has an exit button in the GUI.

I use Far Manager (with plugins, e.g. Colorer and NetBox) on Windows (in ConEmu). Total Commander and other GUI based filemanagers are too far disconnected from command line, in my opinion.

For me, the concept of a file manager has a bit of cognitive dissonance in terms of Linux. I mean everything is a file and the idea of a file manager that does everything doesn't really mean it does everything. Somewhere there is an arbitrary line and lots of people will draw that line differently.

For me, Bash (or whatever) are great file managers, it's just that the necessary complexity of managing files on Linux manifests itself as necessary complexity in the command line. Sure, Bash (or whatever) isn't what someone means by "file manager" but then again it's not really clear what they mean be "file manager" at all. What is necessary and what isn't becomes a matter of taste. I use |pcmanfm| and it does what I need -- even if it isn't |explorer.exe| -- when I use it. And I use it when I'm trying not to expend to much effort forming a mental map of the tree layout.

But for me, one of the qualities of a great file manager is automating repetitive tasks and Bash (or whatever) do that really well, e.g. it needs to treat regular expressions as first class citizens.

I agree... given bash combined with a tiling window-manager, I've found very little use for a file manager. The only exception that comes to mind is when browsing a directory of photos, because in that case thumbnails are more informative than file names.

I've been using Darktable. The high level "one thing done well" is photos. Part of the issue with file managers is that files are often the wrong abstraction. In my typical use case when I'm dealing with photos, their geographic location in the file system isn't a high priority.

I agree. The only time I seem to reach for a file manager in Linux is when I have a folder of files and need to choose files using a non-obvious criteria (like delete zero-size files or find filenames that are repeated). These are cases where coming up with the shell command takes longer than just sorting and pointing at something.

Otherwise, I prefer the shell because of things like history, job control, and tab completion. I've had users ask me about Nautilus and I kind of blank because I would have just used Bash.

I haven't used Windows in years (I'm quite comfortable with Finder and decent with Nautilus) and find Explorer really awkward to use. I'm sure it's just lack of familiarity. 15 years ago the situation would have been reversed for me.

Usually I agree with bashing Linux GUIs: indeed, all accessible GUI software is always written for OS/X somehow. But I don't know what is wrong with these file managers. I'm using Thunar, which is as simple as possible to do basic filesystem navigation, and ranger from console, when I do need something more like MC. Well, yeah, maybe it would be better to be able to use bash and stuff from graphic file manager, but otherwise I'm pretty OK with the setup. Anyway, I like it way better that anything I know on Windows/MacOS.

So today I disagree.

Both OSX and Linux lack good file managers, unfortunately. Basically the only thing i miss really much. Compared to Total Commander (and FAR for someone) everything else feels really bleak.

P.S. For OSX i recommend CRAX Commander which trying to emulate TC with ~30% success rate :) Much worser than original but better than most alternatives

Also, on linux i tend to skip mc and go to console directly. Some some unknown reason using mc doesn't feel like productivity improvement at all (unlike TC)

> * Both OSX and Linux lack good file managers, unfortunately.*

I can't recall a single time when I said "man I really wish Finder wasn't missing [this or that feature], I could really use that right about now."

See rant above about Lister. Well, technically could be external program but i was unable to find external program either. Of course there are plenty more different features not covered here

can you provide some examples of missing functionality?

(I have never found thunar or dolphin lacking for anything serious, so I wonder what TC is able to do that they can't)

Hard to say in particular. There are hundreds tiny bits that affect productivity. i don't have thunar or dolphin under hand to verify, but just look at lister (TC's internal viewer). It's uber-fast (startup time, file opening time, closing time on ESC), i also can open multi-gigabyte files in an blink of an eye and also _scroll_ though them without even slowing down. same for switching encodings, searching for a text (again, good shortcuts, speed etc)

Can any of the file managers (or anything) do something similar in handy manner?

I've tried a bunch of file managers but I'm not really happy with any of them. I tend to go with the least annoying alternative when I choose among Linux desktop programs (because they are all pretty horrible), in the file manager case my pick is PCManFM, for now... :)

No mention for my favourite - Ranger, a terminal-based, keyboard-oriented file manager that I prefer to Midnight Commander.

There was a massive pile left out in favor of talking up multiple KDE ones. And at least Konqueror and Dolphin would only be considered "to try" if you have had your head in the Fedora/RHEL sand for way too long.

There is Spacefm, a fork of Pcmanfm that can do mounts etc without the involvement of Freedesktop parts.

And if one is to focus on "traditional" (dual column) managers, where is emelFM2?

If you use zsh, there is deer[0], which has ranger like navigation and some useful features, but starts up instantaneously, unlike ranger. Great for quickly moving around complex directories structures.

0. https://github.com/Vifon/deer

I don't recognise the Nautilus I use from the screenshot or the description. For example, I have a completely different sidebar and I have no problem having multiple tabs in a window.

The screenshot is of a really old Gnome 2 Nautilus.

That seems like a very old version to review.

Article mentions that Nautilus , default gnome/ubuntu, file manager doesn't have Tabs, which is incorrect as I use it daily and tabs help me get more done in it.

Haha, I still just use the ROX filer. It's quite minimal but has some nice keyboard navigation shortcuts.

the only time i use the gui is to drag and drop files in os x, i.e. to mail something, or upload.

does anyone know if there is a tool that will allow you to simulate a drag+drop in the gui, and provide a path instead? typing "open ." and then re-arranging windows and dragging and dropping a file is so incredibly cumbersome.

Krusader + GNOME Commander + Midnight Commander are my favorites; Double Commander for running under OS X.

nemo is also quite good.

Vifm !!!

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