Nautilus, the Gnome file assistant manager, sucks utter donkeyballs. Let us make an unordered list of the ways:
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If the underlying filesystem changes, say a copy operation, the file manager view does not update without a manual refresh by CTL+R. This leaves the view in a stale state, presenting false file information to the user, who might never know until they do something bad. This is a showstopper bug that’s been hanging around since forever.
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Batch rename. Good luck trying to rename a series of files ordered sequentially by number, if the number happens to start with any number other than one. A sequence from 2 to x is impossible to batch rename. Because regex in sed never worked either. No, wait. It’s always worked! For like, 50 years.
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Why, when moving a collection of files or a directory within the same filesystem, does it actually perform a copy and delete operation, taking cpu and time, when the inode location could just be updated like mv does?
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Thumbnails? Why do they take longer to generate for images and video than than the totality of the existence of the universe?
Nautilus is an unusable mess. If command line file utils were this bad, we’d never be able to reliably store and manipulate files. Who in their right mind actually uses this junk?
I also find it incredible, that there’s no GUI button to edit the path. You have to just kind of know that Ctrl+L does that…
I don’t have any of OP’s issues, but this one! I hate it! Especially on the Steam Deck
Don’t worry, it’s documented on the second tab of options in an unrelated dialog box, so anyone who needs it should know where to find it.
This is the same in Dolphin (Plasma’s file browser). And it’s the same hotkey!
In Dolphin, you can click to the right of the path, like you would in a textbox.
I admit, it’s not the most intuitive method either, but when you hover your mouse there, it does change over to a text editing cursor, shows a caret-like line to the right of the path and will eventually throw up a tooltip that you can “Click to Edit Location”…
Come to the dark side, KDE has Dolphin and it swims faster than any gnome could.
You can just install Dolphin on GNOME, you don’t have to go the whole way.
You might as well go the whole way for desktop supremacy! ;)
Nah, I like GNOME, and I mostly use Nautilus anyway. :P
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Also works on Windows
KDE is the answer to all of OPs problems.
Dolphin has been one of my favorite benefits of switching from Ubunt to Debian! I didn’t know how “plain” nautilus was until I met Dolphin.
I’ve been able to customize the file window to my liking and it’s really nice !
Using a file manager without split panels feels like going back to the 90s for me now. You mean I have to open two different windows?!
I’ve tried both but always find myself just opening new windows instead of using split panels. I find it to be more convenient personally.
Dolphin has split panels… Hit F3
Oh yeah that’s what I meant, I’m so used to split panels in Dolphin now that other file managers feel old-school.
KDE gang rise up! Can’t stand GNOME and its design philosophy, in recent times it seems like it’s been trying its hardest to become the most off-brand macOS it can possibly be. Everywhere I look its more form over function. Urgh.
100% agreed. I personally hate the Appleverse, so Gnome just irks my gears.
KDE Nation, we are armed with Plasma!!!
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We have no Baloo on this rig.
And Thunar was a thunder god, not a king.Removed by mod
Sweetie, I am very familiar with lotz & lotz of nix.
Refer to my previous post for Nordic jokez.
Takk skal du ha.
Personally I never understood why file managers in linux refuse to do operations that require privileges. Guess what, if I have Nautilus open and want to move files into, let’s say,
/usr/local
, I don’t want to have to switch to the terminal to do so if I already have the stuff copied within nautilus. On Windows, I just get an admin password prompt if I try to do naughty stuff. On Linux, we have the whole polkit system, but no file manager seems to ever use it. Tbf, this is not a nautilus problem, as no file manager seems to do this.You can do this in Nemo by default, and for Dolphin you’ll need to install the KDE “kio-admin” package.
Oh wow you can? I just switched to Nemo on Arch after using Thunar for a long time but I got annoyed at it for crashing a lot when I copy files to my FTP server. Very good to know!
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I’m aware of nautilus-admin, but not only is it not maintained, imho it should be part of nautilus by default, and it has to open a new nautilus window when you use it. What I want is to drag and drop files to
/usr/local
and then get a password prompt to do the move. With nautilus-admin, I need to have the foresight to use “Open as admin” when going into/usr/local
, but if I had that foresight then I might as well just start nautilus as root to begin with. Usually I just want to look into the folder, and only then realize I need to change something, which means a good old “go back up one folder, then search thelocal
folder again, then right click, search for ‘Open as admin’, then get thrown into a new window, completely disorienting myself in the process”.[This comment has been deleted by an automated system]
In Thunar it’s just right-click and “Open as root”
I really like Thunar
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This annoys me to no end.
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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/2022997
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/nautilus/-/issues/994
I ran into each of these personally.
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That view bug has been sitting around since 2009, from what I can gather. But a file manager giving false filesystem state to a user is a showstopper. It violates the main purpose of the program. And risks data loss. Users may make errors based on false information.
Batch renaming I use regularly by ingesting media from cameras, though typically at the command line.
I honestly can never imagine Linux without KDE plasma. It has its flaws for sure, but at least I can modify the shit out of it to force it to meet my needs 100%.
Yeah every once in a while I see a screenshot of GNOME that looks really nice and get tempted to try it again, and usually within a day or two I’m back to KDE lol.
No shade to people who like to use GNOME, but it’s really not for me.
Absolutely. Gnome is becoming gorgeous, but its workflow is not for me. Also, all the missing things that I have to add extensions for is just not ideal. I just re-create the gnome theme in kde when I miss gnome. or just install it in a VM and enjoy for for a little while. Otherwise, kde has always been where I belong.
I’ve had the best experience using xfce.
I would use it if it supported 4k better. Every time I set the resolution to 4k and the scaling to 2x, the whole UI gets jacked up and something can’t be clicked anymore. Window bars stay really small. The panel gets all messed up. That’s basically on every single distribution I’ve tried with xfce
Thunar
Thunar
Thunar?
Thunar.
Thunar
Caja tho
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I don’t even use Linux, but isn’t copying and deleting files to simply move them, like super bad in the long run for data integrity?
Yes, which is why Nautilus doesn’t do that, and OP is doing something weird
Select a group of folders and try it yourself!
How?
It’s crazy crazy sort order that I can’t stand. They deliberately go in and remove certain characters from the filename, specifically to make the sorting behave weirdly.
If the underlying filesystem changes, say a copy operation, the file manager view does not update without a manual refresh by CTL+R. This leaves the view in a stale state, presenting false file information to the user, who might never know until they do something bad. This is a showstopper bug that’s been hanging around since forever.
I don’t know what you mean. If a open my Downloads folder and then download something, it shows up in Nautilus without refreshing anything
Batch rename. Good luck trying to rename a series of files ordered sequentially by number, if the number happens to start with any number other than one. A sequence from 2 to x is impossible to batch rename. Because regex in sed never worked either. No, wait. It’s always worked! For like, 50 years.
I mean at least there is a batch rename function unlike in windows
Why, when moving a collection of files or a directory within the same filesystem, does it actually perform a copy and delete operation, taking cpu and time, when the inode location could just be updated like mv does?
Again, I can’t reproduce it. I can move many GB instantly using ctrl + x and ctrl + v
The only thing that really annoys me with Nautilus is that you can’t type in the directory path you want to open except using ctrl + L. In the hamburger menu there even is an option to copy the path. Why not make one more to edit it? Or replace copy with edit, because when editing you can also copy it anyway
Of cause you can batch rename with an additional tool. Same goes for nautilus
I don’t want to debate win here, that’s off topic, but batch renaming is something Explorer does.
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Why the fuck does a desktop app have a hamburger menu though.
Why not?
Dolphin has a hamburger menu too, what’s so weird about that?
Gnome and kde are horrible for that. Mobile UX on a desktop platform is terrible to use.
I feel like with every major UI update it takes more steps to do the same basic tasks.
They’re gonna have to put those options somewhere and there’s only so much space in the top bar
So, gnome is an alternative desktop environment and it’s great that they exist. If they inspired Apple’s UI or the other way around, doesn’t matter but they are the Apple UI of Linux. Mac users switching to Linux can have a somewhat familiar experience.
That said, their “we know better than you what you want, luser” attitude makes it hard for me not to grin when someone rants about their stuff. It shouldn’t, because they are probably mostly unpaid contributors and their work should be valued, but once in a while…
It looks pretty though
Dolphin integrates fine into Gnome. Installs a tooon of dependencies though
The one that really irks me now is that Nautilus in Ubuntu doesn’t show thumbnails for PNG images in the file selection dialog. It’s such an ass-backwards change that I’m legitimately shocked.
- The file selection dialog is not a part of Nautilus. It is either a provided by the toolkit (e.g. Qt, GTK3, GTK4) or by a xdg-desktop-portal implementation. The GTK4 file chooser that is also used by GNOME’s portal implementation supports thumbnails since December 2022 or GNOME 44.
- I guess you are using an older (LTS) version of ubuntu that uses an outdated version of GTK.
Okay. I’m glad that the situation is looking better, and it’s probably more on the Ubuntu people than the Gnome people, but it’s still an incredibly shitty experience.
22.04 is not outdated.
It is 3 GNOME releases behind.
You’ll have to compile a daily from github if you want the proposed fix.
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I like Thunar, but it doesn’t display the thumbnails I specifically embedded into my video files. Is that even possible?
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I set those limits, I made sure all the plugins to do with thumbnailing are there, and so on. I’m genuinely not sure anymore if it even can work like I want it to.
Whatever I do, Thunar shows an arbitrary frame of the video as its thumbnail, not the embedded one.
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Thunar shows the 33.33% duration frame of any video that it can process
Yeah, that seems to check out. If I research it, I’m not really finding any conclusive evidence that Thunar can actually show embedded thumbnails, so idk
There isn’t an alternative to Gnome, nothing looks the same
And if I use a fork of it then eventually that won’t look as good because it’s not run by the Gnome devs
I’m not a fan of either Gnome or KDE.
To me, the big mistake both make is in the presumption the UI and utilities shipped with those platforms are why people use it. But no. Nobody uses MacOS because of its nifty calculator or the Finder. It’s the overall toolkit integration with apps. Not even look and feel. But consistency in use.
Neither KDE nor Gnome offer that.
What do you mean consistency in use?
People use Macs to feel trendy
I don’t presume to know why others choose to use anything. But MacOS is highly consistent across apps. Dialog boxes, text input forms, file browsing, hot keys, all the same across applications.
Oh so you mean being a closed eco-system
I feel a lot of devs would be upset if they were told they can only develop using GTK for example
I’m not telling devs what they can do. Merely pointing out this is why the projects fail.