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A survey of Linux file managers (Linux.com)

[Posted December 19, 2006 by ris]

Linux.com takes a look at file managers. "Linux file manager ontogeny encapsulates the history of GNU/Linux. File managers began as command-line and generic graphical tools and progressed to desktop-specific ones, gaining sophistication along the way, with mouse controls, for example, replacing buttons. Today, the more than a dozen options highlighted here will suit users with widely varied interests."

(Log in to post comments)

Posted Dec 19, 2006 19:22 UTC (Tue) by superstoned (subscriber, #33164) [Link]

well, i think i can pretty much agree with him. for non-graphical stuff,
MC is nice. on the desktop, konqueror is a very good filemanager, and one
would rarely need more - krusader is a bit overkill for most users, even
for many powerusers.

dolphin, on the other hand, is imho very immature. i've tried the KDE4
subversion version, well - they're working on it, but its far
from 'perfect for daily usage' i'd say. it might have a bright future,
tough. some very nice ideas combined in an easy to use interface, yeah,
that might work :D

What a worthless article

Posted Dec 19, 2006 19:27 UTC (Tue) by Arker (guest, #14205) [Link]

A total fluff piece. Among other flaws, it doesn't even mention Unixtree.

What a worthless article

Posted Dec 19, 2006 22:04 UTC (Tue) by tetromino (subscriber, #33846) [Link]

A modern-day version of XTreeGold? Wow, that sure takes me back. It was 15 years ago, I was but a little kid, the FAT filesystem on my 386SX's tiny hard drive got corrupted for the umpteenth time, and I was trying to use XTreeGold to rescue some of my files... Ah, the memories.

But why in the name of all that is holy would someone want to use XTreeGold, or a Unix clone of it, in 2006?

What a worthless article

Posted Dec 19, 2006 23:56 UTC (Tue) by Arker (guest, #14205) [Link]

It's simply the best tool for the job.

It will do everything you'd ever want to do in a filemanager, it provides a clear display that allows you to parse the information you need very quickly and easily, and can be run completely from the keyboard, which means you can perform operations much more quickly than with a GUI and mouse contraption.

So far as GUIs go, Krusader is quite usable, but it still feels slow and cludgey next to unixtree.

What a worthless article

Posted Dec 20, 2006 16:33 UTC (Wed) by TRauMa (guest, #16483) [Link]

It's simply the best tool for the job.

I like the nice thumbnails! ;-)

What a worthless article

Posted Dec 20, 2006 16:43 UTC (Wed) by TRauMa (guest, #16483) [Link]

That is forgiveable, but not mentioning ROX Filer is really bad (see the first comments on the article).

A survey of Linux file managers (Linux.com)

Posted Dec 19, 2006 19:52 UTC (Tue) by abovett (subscriber, #13139) [Link]

Not really a survey - more a set of (rather biased) opinions. Not a very useful article - doesn't add to the knowledge of more experienced users and is too opinionated and narrow to be of use to beginners.

A survey of Linux file managers (Linux.com)

Posted Dec 19, 2006 20:13 UTC (Tue) by superstoned (subscriber, #33164) [Link]

it might have been a bit more precise, telling why certain things didn't
work very well. but i think most users will come to the same conclusions
after a short period of usage...

A survey of Linux file managers (Linux.com)

Posted Dec 20, 2006 2:03 UTC (Wed) by jwb (subscriber, #15467) [Link]

I agree. This article is in the same family as all the other Linux.com junk that gets posted here on LWN: fluffy uninformative pieces. I don't think it adds value to my LWN subscription.

A survey of Linux file managers (Linux.com)

Posted Dec 20, 2006 17:56 UTC (Wed) by i3839 (subscriber, #31386) [Link]

Linux.com articles often look interesting at first sight, but when you read them they've no useful info in them. Best to redirect all their new article announcements to /dev/null, it's only wasting space and people's time here.

A survey of Linux file managers (Linux.com)

Posted Dec 21, 2006 17:02 UTC (Thu) by boudewijn (subscriber, #14185) [Link]

It depends a bit on the author. Nathan Willis usually writes well -- but
his last article on photo managers was a bit of a dud. I've read good
things by Bruce Byfield as well, but this article read as if it was
written between flushing the toilet and washing his hands.

A survey of Linux file managers (Linux.com)

Posted Dec 23, 2006 13:27 UTC (Sat) by job (subscriber, #670) [Link]

Agreed. I wish LWN would stop re-posting all those.

A survey of Linux file managers (Linux.com)

Posted Dec 19, 2006 22:29 UTC (Tue) by richo123 (guest, #24309) [Link]

More comprehensive and less opinionated survey on wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_managers

Just use the shell

Posted Dec 20, 2006 14:10 UTC (Wed) by Richard_J_Neill (subscriber, #23093) [Link]

It's much faster to use the shell, especially if:

* You know the readline shortcuts (Ctrl-A,E, Alt-F,B etc).

* You use the qmv and imv utilities for mass renaming of files.

* You have a "move to trashcan command" (I alias this as 'cn')

* You have the newer bash-completion enabled

* You have inputrc with:
set show-all-if-ambiguous on
which makes tab-completion so much more helpful.

* You use konsole with tabs, and name the tabs automatically: .bashrc:
if test "$DISPLAY"; then
if [ "$DISPLAY" == ":0" -o "$DISPLAY" == ":0.0" ];then
export PS1=$PS1"\[\e]30;\W/ \a\]\[\e]0;\a\]"
else
export PS1=$PS1"\[\e]30;\h:\W/ \a\]\[\e]0;\a\]"
fi
fi

* You are aware of zcat, strings, file, and the fact that less can cope
automatically with .ps, .pdf and .rpm files (they get viewed as text)

* You might, or might not wish to alias mv/cp/rm to "mv -i" etc.

Hope some of that is useful.

Just use the shell

Posted Dec 20, 2006 14:20 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Oddly, the readline shortcuts you didn't mention (forward-search-history and reverse-search-history, the history isearchers) are by *far* the most useful.

(The automatic tab naming stuff is damn useful. Thanks!)

Oh, and less can cope with random binaries, tar, rpm, gzip, and much else if you use the lessopen.sh script. (Myself I use a hacked copy that runs eu-readelf on binaries and nm -D on shared libraries, but that's just me.)

Just use the shell

Posted Dec 20, 2006 17:46 UTC (Wed) by Arker (guest, #14205) [Link]

One nice thing about OFMs is that you have a full-featured command line integrated, and anything easier done that way can be done that way, without breaking the flow in any way.

Terminal window escapes

Posted Dec 22, 2006 2:36 UTC (Fri) by ldo (subscriber, #40946) [Link]

Hey, cool, thanks for that.

However, I don't understand your use of "\e]30;" instead of "\e]2;". The latter sequence is documented in the console_codes(4) man page as setting the terminal window title, while the former is not mentioned. You talk about using Konsole with tabs, but this is not a requirement, since Konsole automatically recognizes the set-window-title sequence as only applying to the current tab if you have multiple tabs.

For everybody's reference, the full set of sequences you can put in a Bash prompt is listed here.