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Comment by vvanpo | Hacker News Reader

There are many ways macOS improves over Linux desktops, but file explorers is not one of the arguments I would have made. Finder is practically unusable.

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Honest question, what's wrong with Finder? I use ForkLift for the heavy lifting (lol), but it works just fine for "navigate to file, open/move/delete file, sort by size/date, tag files, find files".

   - It's slow
   - Middle-click don't open the folder in a new tab
   - It doesn't natively handle SFTP mounting
   - The visual fixed arrangement of icons can be weird

Finder still can't handle SFTP connections. In 2021. I feel like I'm going insane, or I've missed some sort of critical update, but no, it's just sitting there.

It hardly handles SMB/CIFS connections correctly, and it's been fucked up for years.

Well.. you’ll have to install an fs driver for that. Exactly like in Linux. Or just use mountainduck

What makes you think that you need to install a driver on Linux to make SFTP mounts work in a file manager?

Every file manager I've used on Linux has support for SFTP out of the box. Not quite sure what you're talking about here.

This.

It's incredibly useful basic functionality that both Finder and explorer inexplicably lack. This alone makes Linux desktops far more friendly even for novice users who want to do something beyond sharing gifs on web forums.

SFTP.

Novice users.

Why would a novice user want SFTP built-in to their file manager?

To move files between machines they own?

Novice users use flash drives or emails, they don't set up ssh servers. In fact, I've never seen a non-power user set up an ssh server except maybe if you count a consumer NAS (which usually show up as networked drives).

To that point, I'd be willing to bet money that any user that even has access to an ssh server they'd want to use either has the technical know how to set up those tools themselves, or has an IT person who can do so for them.

On the OSes that have SFTP capable shells ssh is enabled by default.

Other OSes lacking this is why everyone keeps their data in silos.

This still doesn't answer the question of why a novice would want SFTP.

SFTP is a protocol, and "novice users" are actually using it every day without realizing it.

Right... When and where they would use it without realizing it?

Not mentioned yet:

- no explicit refresh - if you're using network shares you often won't get an update notification, but have to go out and in again

- insistence on abstractions - I don't want to click through all the folders, sometimes I have a path ready to paste

Saving a file as /tmp/blah saves it as :tmp:blah the current directory, then you curse and have to press cmd shift g to pick a folder, paste the filename with path, remove the file name bit, then finally get to save your file.

Care to explain? I'm not saying Finder is great, but I find it perfectly usable and I've never noticed it drop features willy nilly (as was the case with Nautilus back in the day).

I have to use TotalFinder to be able to cut and paste files which I find very strange after all the years of experience on other OSes. I also resent not being able to conduct basic file management in file selection dialogs. Other missing features I have to hack around with scripts or add-ons: Copy terminal-friendly path, open current folder in terminal, create a blank text file here. Probably more.

you can move (cut + paste) in finder, it is hidden for some reason. instead of cmd + v, you need cmd + option + v and the file you copied will be pasted just like it was "cut".

I don't particularly like it, but I've not seen it crash or glitch out with the frequency that Linux file managers have ever since I've used them (a couple decades across a dozen or so desktop and laptop systems; mostly Nautilus, Dolphin [wasn't Konqueror also the file manager for a while, or am I mis-remembering?] and IIRC Thunar)

The Finder doesn't even allow me to middle-click to open a folder in a new tab, it's horrible. I miss KDE Dolphin.

True that. Finder is only slightly better than nautilus, but it gets beaten up by Dolphin badly. It would win outright for me with the "Press F4 for an integrated shell" feature alone.

You can definitely do that in Finder by adding the Terminal.app as a Service.

Here’s a guide I found: https://www.howtogeek.com/210147/how-to-open-terminal-in-the...

They are referring to the shell being integrated into Finder similar to the integrated terminal in Visual Studio Code or IntelliJ IDEs not launching a separate Terminal.app window.

Oh, I see. Apologies for misunderstanding, then.

I see what's wrong. I just don't have middle mouse button - problem solved.

You're probably joking sarcastically, but in case you aren't, you can click both sides of the track pad or three finger tap (if supported) to preform a middle click.

What do people use the middle click for?

FYI, you can open a folder as a new tab (or window) using cmd+click in Finder. Myself, I still struggle trying to ctrl-click folders open in Dolphin instead of middle click.

https://www.appleworld.today/2017/01/17/how-to-open-folders-...

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