As a linux user, I really wish that the Nautilus team wouldn't have changed some UI features all in recent major version changes - it makes me wish Windows Explorer from the Win 2000 area back sometimes.
If you want to stick with GTK, Nemo is a fork of Nautilus just before all the features started being removed, which aims to stay more featureful like a traditional file manager. It's also a little bit more performant than Nautilus recently too I think, but both are still slow compared to eg. Thunar or Dolphin.
Laughing in Midnight commander
The only thing I miss with it is a "goto" shortcut, à la vim sneak. Ironically, Dolphin or Explorer go to a file when you start typing its name. Don't get me started on GNOME searching files.