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Comment by dotnet00 | Hacker News Reader

After temporarily coming back to GNOME from spending a lot of time with KDE, I've found Nautilus to be pretty much worse than even Windows Explorer. Besides the issues mentioned, some other issues I run into:

- Can't manually type in a path

- Moving into a mounted drive clears navigation history, so can't back out to the previous directory

I also somewhat miss how Dolphin would re-open where I left it, tabs and all. That said, I'm on v3.36.3 so maybe it has fixed those issues in the 2 years since.

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Probably because Windows Explorer is great file manager.

By the way, in Nautilus you can type path, the shortcut is ctrl+l

Nautilus is pretty bad but I find macOS Finder even worse.

I can AppleScript to Finder on the toolbar and do some pretty nice stuff. For example, the script to add a button to open a terminal in the directory the window is showing is trivial.

Would you be willing to share such a script?

I found this example code from 2008 for an up button on the apple website:

`tell application "Finder" set the target of Finder window 1 to (container of target of Finder window 1) end tell`

But I am getting an error on modern OSX... I would be interested to see how your button works :)

Well, Affric you seem to have done something, so here is the code:

  tell application "Finder"
    set myWin to window 1
    set thePath to (POSIX path of (target of myWin as alias))
    set thePath to (quoted form of POSIX path of (target of myWin as alias))
    tell application "Terminal"
      activate
      tell window 1
        do script "cd " & thePath
      end tell
    end tell
  end tell

You use it to create an application and then change the icon to something appropriate.

I’m curious what you dislike about the macOS Finder.

I like it to the point that if I need to organize a bunch of files, I’ll sometimes just export the folder as a file share so I can organize the files from a Mac over the network.

>Probably because Windows Explorer is great file manager.

Having it pointed out like that, you're right. I think my 'big' complaints about Windows Explorer have just been the lack of tabs, which I think are being/have been added in Win11) and the multiple-windows-single-process model, which hasn't been as much of an issue lately with explorer being a lot more stable.

Otherwise explorer is a very smooth experience. I just treated it as bad because of frustrations with Windows in general.

explorer also allows you to create a new window in a new process now, but not using a keyboard shortcut as far as i can tell. you have to go file > new window > new window using a new process. finicky, but possible.

There's a setting in the Folder Options that lets you force folders to open in their own process.

Find the "Launch folder windows in a separate process" option under Folder Options -> View

Or at least there is in Windows 10, idk if they removed it with all the other useful stuff removed in Win11.

It's still got some weird behaviours. For example right-click gives you the context menu for the currently selected file, not the one you just clicked. And no confirmation for large operations - you accidentally dragged one folder onto another because of a dodgy touchpad driver? You're now moving those GBs and will have to revert it manually afterwards.

> lack of tabs, which I think are being/have been added in Win11

Unfortunately, they backtracked on that, so still no tabs.

I use QTTabBar and Link Shell Extension. Only thing I sometimes miss is the option to dropdown-view folder contents

Agreed, I'm not even a windows person, but it's file manager is pretty awesome compared to Gnome and Mac OS IMO.

Finder is shite. I've had to use Mac OS for the past month and I hate it.

Windows explorer is quite good. It could still improve a lot, as you can notice after using Dolphin, but it's good. I don't think it qualifies for "great", but well, that's subjective.

>By the way, in Nautilus you can type path, the shortcut is ctrl+l

Obligatory what the fuck were they thinking. I'm glad there is no api to access the "flash bios" button on the motherboard because some nautilus dev would surely find a feature like this to bind to that button.

> - Can't manually type in a path

As a Windows user, recently I found myself within a new Ubuntu install. I wanted to view `/opt/` in file manager, but I couldn't find howto enter a path. A function that is really easy and intuitive in Windows Explorer. The first answer on Google was `CTRL+L`, which worked. But the stark difference of the ease of use between these two applications still baffles me.

Fun fact: Windows Explorer also has the same hotkey for typing out the path.

As do all browsers. It seems to be a standard.

...still doesn't work for Finder though.

I mean, it’s just command-shift-G, which you can discover from the “Go” menu.

Where is the "command" key on my Linux box?

The key is called "super" on Linux and "Windows" on Windows. On a Macintosh, it is called "command".

According to USB standards, it is called "GUI".

You can also just type / or ~ to start typing a path from the root or your home directory.

That said, I am with you, I like Windows Explorer best of all.

The only problem I ever had with KDE is it randomly hogging the CPU. On different machines, same problem. And not just for a minute, but 10+. Still not sure what the reason was, that was Fedora 24 to 30 and some random Kubuntu between (yep, all had that problem randomly). Maybe it's fixed these days.

GNOME just got worse and worse lol

When my machines were doing that on Plasma it was typically the Baloo file indexing or some Akonadi related process that was going crazy on the CPU. This week I switched back to Gnome Shell after a few years of Plasma on my main desktop and I must say it feels a lot more responsive than Plasma.

You are absolutely correct of file indexing and it was true of the prior iteration Nepomuk. It is seemingly a complex thing to get right. File indexing sucks hard in several instances

- When the OS is running on the same spinning rust or performance is substantially impacted by said rusts performance - When the filesystem uses encryption but isn't hardware accelerated - On first run when it has to index everything - If the filesystem performs poorly on lots of small files.

So you boot up on a fresh install do you just not showcase features working to their fullest or do you sink performance for the first hour or hours on some systems much more than others? I think personally you ought to prompt the user to schedule the first run of the file indexing service since it will impact performance far more initially than it will thereafter.

>The only problem I ever had with KDE is it randomly hogging the CPU.

Can you be more specific, like what process exactly did that?

Not OP, but plasmashell, activitymanagerd, recently krunner. The first two because I have a sshfs mount, the latter only recently for no good reason.

>Not OP, but plasmashell, activitymanagerd, recently krunner. The first two because I have a sshfs mount, the latter only recently for no good reason.

I don't doubt you, I never had performance issue with my KDE though I always run LTS Kubuntu. I am wondering why plasma or activity monitor would have issues with your filesystem.

My guess is that they query a service that does file operations for no good reason, and then busy wait for it.

I think that you need to press Ctrl+L to type a path.

Which incidentally is the same hot key used to go to the url bar on browsers

Mnemonic: L for Location

I've always used ALT-D.

I'm a long-time Linux user and I know the short cut and use it often. Nonetheless I have no notion why the Nautilus developers consider this to be a better UI than just rendering an editable path!

Honestly, I'd be fine with it if "edit path" was an option in the dropdown menu for navigation pills. I guess the Nautilus designers drank too much of the Apple kool-aid and decided that advanced features like custom paths should be avoided at all cost.

i actually prefer the pills by default, but what I don't like is that it's not clear you can switch.

You do, which is dumb, it should be doable by mouse or really really easy to find. It shouldn't require Googling or hunting. Ctrl+L is listed on page 2 of the keyboard shortcuts for Nautilus when it's arguably such a basic thing that at very least it should be in the stupid hamburger menu. Keyboard shortcuts should be a shortcut not the only way to do something.

It's the same shortcut as in all browsers, same for Ctrl+T or Ctrl+W that operates on tabs (Yes Nemo has tabs). The same way a browser is also a file crawler and viewer. It's the same paradigm. So no definitely not dumb.

And in KeepassXC it's lock database, which is infuriating when it's your muscle memory for "focus that primary thing you type into" and your unlock password is long.

What browser requires you to hit Ctrl+L to enter an URL? I'm not saying the choice of Ctrl+L is dumb, but the choice that the only way to enter a path is Ctrl+L.

Huh, I hadn't considered that they might have a shortcut for it, TIL!

That will definitely easy that pain point a lot, although it's still a somewhat odd decision to not have the path in the bar editable too.

You don't even need that, you can just start typing the path and the path bar will show up on top.

Not very discoverable, but just like on the browser, hit ctrl+l.

Had the same issue when trying to switch over my dad to a Linux distro. Absolutely had to find an alternative to Nautilus that was intuitive to a Windows Explorer user. Closest I could find was PCManFM.

Nemo is nice. I haven't checked ssh mount but it handles mounting Google drive with no issue. It's part of Cinnamon, which is the user-positive Gnome2 fork (versus Gnome3's user hostile approach)

You are much better off using Overgrive. Last time I used the integrated Google Drive / Dropbox sync in any distro, the performance was abysmal.

MATE is the Gnome2 fork, Cinnamon forks Gnome3.

TIL. Thanks for the clarification.

It is quite superior to Gnome3. I'm glad the developers built it.

I'm on Ubuntu 20.04 with GNOME and I installed Nemo because of type ahead search. It works well.

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