[clug] Re: linux Digest, Vol 8, Issue 1

[Gavin Owen]

Get the Rox Filer file manager. Get it, use it, love it. It's not
perfect, but it's the best file manager I've found for Gnome thus far.


There are very few things I like about nautilus. When I think of it I
can't help draw parallels to emacs. With emacs it's been said about it -
"great OS, bad editor!" OK so maybe that's being a bit harsh but you
know what I mean (I don't want moon-phase reading, email client,
psychiatrist(!) etc in emacs - just an editor!). With nautilus I always
think that the add-ons are fancy (audio playing, CD burning, emblems)
but its core functionality, which is to manage files let's face it -
bloody-well stinks!

Why does it stink?
1) You have to go Edit->Preferences->(Toggle radio button for showing
hidden files)->close then repeat for re-hiding dot files. This *should*
be a one-click toolbar button.

2) Permission management is shocking. Try editing the permissions of
multiple files - you get a seperate properties dialog for every file!
Even then you have to click on a different tab (Permissons) and there is
no quick way to enter say 0644 - you have to go 'tick, tick, tick etc'.
If you're currently thinking "Meh! just use the CLI" - well I do in
order to get around the limitations of nautilus, but really a
well-designed graphical filer would mean you shouldn't have to!

3) File viewing. 'View as Details' is poor - it doesn't even show
filesystem permissions! Nor can you highlight multiple files with the
mouse in the view - gotta use keyboard. 'View as Icons' takes up far too
much screen space for the amount of files it displays. At 50% which is
the size I want things, the text looks shocking. Where is some kind of
decent 'icon list' view?

4) Wallpaper messing - It shouldn't mess with your desktop wallpaper by
default! IMHO this should be the job of the window manager, not the darn
file manager! When I ssh into my other boxen and run nautilus on them
(displaying nautilus on my machine's X server) I get the other machine's
wallpaper writing over my own! I know you can turn this off with the
extra --no-desktop switch, but this should be the default.

5) The toolbar is huge. Also why can't I get rid of the toolbar text. I
know a house is for 'home' and a back arrow is 'back' damnit - get rid
of the text! (or at least the option to do so) And look at how much grey
space there is to the right of those toolbars -damn that's some wasted
screen real-estate.

6) Emblems - what the?! These are, IMHO, useless. Move files to another
platform will these show up? Nope. About as good as the old Macintosh
resource fork on a windows box. I'm glad Apple saw the light. Useless
bloat.

I could go on believe me but I'll leave it there. The fact that a whole
bunch of ex-Apple dudes created a company to focus on a file manager,
raised shitloads of VC and burned through all that, and this is the best
they could come up with?! No-wonder they went broke. It really is a
debacle and I wish gnome would get rid of it.

Solution - use the rox filer :)


> ------------------------------
> 
> Message: 3
> Date: Fri, 1 Aug 2003 16:42:15 +1000
> From: Grant Morphett <grant at gmorph.com>
> Subject: [clug] File Browsers, Nautilus etc
> To: CLUG <linux at samba.org>
> Message-ID: <20030801164215.6a5fcbfa.grant at gmorph.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
> 
> I am trying to find a good file browser.  Before the holy war starts I use the
> CLI mostly but for some jobs you just can't beat a good file browser.
> 
> I am running latest Debian Sid with Gnome.  I like nautilus's file browser itself
> but i don't like everything else I have to run with it or the way it takes over
> my world or its size.  I have tried waffle (one huge perl scirpt - yurch) and
> endeavour2 but both have been unsatisfactory.  gnome-commander - not after the
> midnight commander look so that also rules out FileRunner and gentoo.
> 
> Any suggestions most welcome.
> 
> Oh, if you hate the way nautilus messes with your root background (i.e. like me
> your trying to run xplanet) etc try
> 
> nautilus --no-desktop
> 
> cheers
> 
> Grant
> 
> ------------------------------
> 
> Message: 4
> Date: Fri, 01 Aug 2003 17:01:54 +1000
> From: Damien Elmes <clug at repose.cx>
> Subject: Re: [clug] File Browsers, Nautilus etc
> To: CLUG <linux at samba.org>
> Message-ID: <86brv9q2sd.fsf at mobile.repose.cx>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
> 
> Grant Morphett <grant at gmorph.com> writes:
> 
> > Any suggestions most welcome.
> 
> While nautilus is pretty, if you're after drag & drop, I found
> konqueror to be much more functional.
> 
> I use dired. Tom Lord (the guy who wrote Arch-come-GNU Arch) wrote an
> extension for it called "monkey" which support hierarchical displays
> [1] but I haven't had a chance to play with it yet. Being able to
> tag, move, rename files by regexp or the cursor keys is a lot more
> efficient that doing similar things with the mouse.
> 
> [1] http://regexps.srparish.net/www-ancient/monkey.html
> 
> Cheers,