[HN Gopher] Little rant about GNOME's file manager (a.k.a. Nauti...
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Little rant about GNOME's file manager (a.k.a. Nautilus)
Author : uncoaxable5
Score : 156 points
Date : 2022-04-14 10:07 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (randthoughts.github.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (randthoughts.github.io)
| oliwarner wrote:
| Never agreed more and these aren't isolated things.
|
| I used to use my desktop as a scratch disk. Desktop icons used to
| be handled by an instance of Nautilus in much the same way as
| Explorer does in Windows.
|
| Then one day, one developer disabled it. This followed a low-
| feedback discussion, a quick sermon that using the desktop was
| wrong, and that was that. Months later when this impacted popular
| cadence distributions, it was clear it was a problem but the limo
| promise that Gnome Shell extensions would be good enough, well...
| They've fallen far shorter than what I need.
|
| My productivity has fallen because one dev who wanted the mantle
| of maintainer, took decisions for a million users without real
| consultation.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Why don't you simply retain productivity by dropping gnome?
| After all this isn't exactly the first time they have dropped a
| feature people were peeved about.
| oliwarner wrote:
| No it's not. Not the first feature _I 've_ been angry to
| lose. I've been doing this a while.
|
| I do try to shop around every few years, but return to Gnome.
| KDE is perpetually never quite right. Visual clutter, forcing
| desktop metaphors like Activities on me, and poor integration
| (read: different toolkit) with the things I actually use.
|
| I agree, I should leave. But doing that is even more change.
| At some point I just need to get some work done. I'll moan
| and groan and maybe one day Gnome governance will stop
| individuals vandalising the project's applications without
| community buy-in.
| brightball wrote:
| Is there any reason file managers can't be switched out? It seems
| like something that would be easy enough to configure, especially
| in Linux.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| You can, though? If you're on Gnome, simply install Dolphin or
| Thunar and your file manager should change. You can revert it
| in Settings > Applications > Files by resetting the application
| handler for the application you just installed.
|
| People seem to be confusing the file manager (nautilus) with
| the file picker (whatever an application chooses, often the GTK
| file picker) and the desktop (which can be, but isn't always,
| part of the file manager).
| melissalobos wrote:
| They can, but they usually control the desktop, so if you want
| a consistent experience it is somewhat ill-advised.
| kasabali wrote:
| Joke is on you, GNOME doesn't have a desktop :d
| awhow wrote:
| Regarding 3, I have found search in Nautilus to be faster than
| Windows Explorer, which never returns.
|
| I just wish I could get Miller columns in Nautilus
| digitallyfree wrote:
| Honestly I've never really had search performance issues in
| Nautilus. Windows on the other hand...
| hbn wrote:
| I haven't bothered with Windows' built in search (explorer,
| and god forbid the Start menu search) for finding files since
| discovering Everything
|
| https://www.voidtools.com
|
| I keep it pinned as the first item in my bottom row of
| programs so I can hit Win+1 to fire off an instantaneous file
| search whenever I want. It's great!
| jandrese wrote:
| Windows search is godawful. Not only is it slow, but it
| explicitly omits a bunch of directories, like AppData in your
| home. Guess were most applications keep their user accessible
| data. It's so bad.
|
| If for example someone wants to install a GIMP plugin, you
| can't tell them to just search for the GIMP directory from
| their home, because the search simply won't find it.
| jotm wrote:
| Search was great in 7. Taskbar search - perfect. Then they
| did something to fuck it all up. In Windows 10, I get
| different results for the same search in Taskbar (that's how
| I launch everything, so if I type "Note" and open N++ a few
| times, that's it, it should remember it, which is how 7
| worked).
|
| Explorer search isn't even working half the time for me lol,
| either it doesn't show any results or the search bar is
| completely inaccessible. Fuck knows what's wrong with it, I
| just use Agent Ransack.
| katmannthree wrote:
| Probably an unpopular opinion here, but these aren't technical
| issues. They're cultural. Bounties won't fix it. In the case of
| the file picker issue, there have literally been third party
| patches that the GNOME devs could have used.
|
| I couldn't stand more than a couple days of following their
| gitlab discussions. Each issue goes through roughly the same
| process: someone suggests a feature or a fix for a thing, the
| GNOME devs either say "#WONTFIX you're holding it wrong" or get
| mired into an endless debate of the minutia of the _best_ way to
| implement the feature.
|
| If you want to fix GNOME, you'll have to replace the entire
| leadership structure _and_ a good portion of the devs (and
| somehow get them to ignore the zero-utility clingers whose
| contributions consist of endless discussion posts but no code).
| As it is they act like they were hand-picked by Microsoft to make
| sure progress happens slowly (if at all).
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > If you want to fix GNOME, you'll have to replace the entire
| leadership structure _and_ a good portion of the devs
|
| Isn't Cinnamon pretty close to doing this anyway? And arguably
| other alternative desktops like Pantheon or Budgie.
| agilob wrote:
| >Probably an unpopular opinion here, but these aren't technical
| issues.
|
| I don't know, GUI freezing during file search sounds quite
| technical and very non-cultural to me.
| katmannthree wrote:
| The root cause of the issue is cultural. If you find an issue
| like that and bring it up to the KDE devs, it gets fixed. If
| you bring it up to the GNOME devs, you'll get stonewalled.
| truffdog wrote:
| > Lack of type-ahead search1. Believe it or not, triggering a
| full-blown recursive search doesn't replace the ability to focus
| a particular file in the current folder by simply typing (part
| of) its name. I suspect 90% of users--especially those coming
| from Windows or macOS--expect the latter behavior
|
| MacOS is actually the source of this annoying behavior
| dmitriid wrote:
| You can focus any file by typing its name in MacOS.
|
| However, the behaviour is somewhat weird. If your current
| selection is a folder, and you start typing, it's a 50/50 guess
| of where it will start the search: in the folder you've
| selected, or in the parent folder of your currently selected
| folder
|
| _Edit_ :
|
| Reading other comments I now realise you meant the behaviour of
| Cmd+F which doesn't default to "search in current folder".
|
| Thankfully, there's a setting for that now, added a few years
| back: Cmd + <comma> in a Finder window -> Advanced -> "When
| performing a search: Search the Current Folder"
| Spivak wrote:
| The typeahead flame war is an interesting case where "user
| stories" clash with users -- both sides are ultimately talking
| past one another. The user story is "users can type the name of
| the file/folder they want and hit enter to navigate to it" which
| the current implementation satisfies. But the people in the
| thread want one specific implementation which, while a totally
| valid ask, has the exact same user story as full search. This way
| of looking at design makes "how the software feels" really hard
| to quantify and justify as a deficiency. Although, for me, I
| think after getting used to Crtl-P, FZF, VSCode, Telescope in
| Neovim and "Ctrl-K" in lots of apps I'm with GNOME devs on this
| one and that faster full search should be the end goal but that's
| just like my opinion man.
| truffdog wrote:
| But I want to use the current folder as a namespace limiter :(
| dylan-m wrote:
| > But I want to use the current folder as a namespace limiter
| :(
|
| And it is! The files in the current folder _always_ sort to
| the top. The only real loss between this and the previous
| behaviour is that the view changes slightly, so the other
| (not matching) files disappear. But even the selection
| sticks, so if you hit Escape you can see the matching file in
| context.
| julianlam wrote:
| Sure, and so why not put that recursive search behind ctrl-p?
| I'd certainly use it.
|
| But as someone who has grown up with computers, it's quite
| aggravating to not be able to
| "pu<enter>src<enter>mod<enter>vi<enter>in"
|
| Sure, it's more intuitive to do that in the terminal, but
| sometimes being able to quickly drill down and THEN be able to
| inspect the folder visually, is very helpful.
|
| ... to access public/src/modules/views/index.js
| Spivak wrote:
| I think my main issue is that GNOME's search is dog slow. If
| Nautilus had the speed of FZF I don't think you would miss it
| but I'm open to being wrong. You would just type
| pusrmovi<enter> to jump to the folder or just viind<enter> to
| go to the file.
| julianlam wrote:
| Ah, interesting... yes, the search is indeed dog-slow. If
| it's a filename match, it comes up fairly quickly because
| it's been indexed, but if I pass in a path, or parts of
| one, then it doesn't come up with anything at all.
| bj0 wrote:
| The dev's response to the "flame war" was the primary reason I
| switched full time to Nemo and never went back.
|
| The user experiences are very different between the two
| features and trying to conflate them is a mistake in my
| opinion. since I use typehead to navigate the file manager
| quickly without touching the mouse, replacing it with a very
| slow recursive search made nautilus unusable to me. Even if the
| search was very fast, though, it would still be a good search
| but a bad navigation tool.
|
| Luckily there are alternatives and Nemo is a great file
| manager.
| asoneth wrote:
| This part seems unnecessarily entitled:
|
| > "...when I see developers' time and effort spent on endlessly
| redesigning and rewriting core apps, I wonder: is that really
| necessary? How about working on these major issues instead? One
| of them dates back to 2006. I guess that fixing a 16 years old
| bug is not as exciting as rewriting the default image viewer in
| Rust6."
|
| I've helped with bugs that are old enough to drink and they're
| typically not fun -- I do it because I get paid.
|
| I can't tell whether the author's suggestion for the GNOME
| Foundation to fund a bug bounty is an offer to contribute to said
| bounty but even if the author is submitting patches or
| contributing money it would be worth keeping in mind that this
| work is typically done by volunteers who have the freedom to
| choose how to allocate their limited free time and energy.
|
| If the author has nothing to offer but complaints and still
| expects contributors to stop doing exciting things that interest
| them in order to fix old bugs then they come off as a choosing
| beggar.
|
| (It reminds me of when I used to volunteer with trail maintenance
| -- work would have gone a lot faster if all the people who
| complained about trail conditions actually showed up to help.)
| [deleted]
| naoqj wrote:
| >I can only imagine how miserable photographers' experience must
| be
|
| Photographers don't use Linux.
| dylan-m wrote:
| Photographers don't tend to use regular file managers, either.
| I mean, previews are good and all and there are definitely
| problems here, but the photographers I know use tools like
| Adobe Bridge for a multitude of reasons.
| klodolph wrote:
| The photographers I've known generally use some kind of
| dedicated application to organize their photos. Lightroom is
| one of the common ones. Adobe Bridge is another. Shotwell works
| on Linux.
|
| I think the real problem is that I don't know any half-decent
| photo editing programs on Linux. GIMP seems to be the best
| option, but it's not even on par with mid-1990s Photoshop.
| post-it wrote:
| Darktable and RawTherapee are excellent, but they just can't
| keep up with Lightroom.
| jorvi wrote:
| GIMP needs a name change and a serious injection of money
| like Blender.
|
| To be honest I don't understand why 'the industry' doesn't
| want to invest in this. They hated being tethered to things
| like Maya, I can't imagine they enjoy being tethered to
| Photoshop.
| syntheweave wrote:
| It's 90% a project coordination problem, I think. Blender's
| efforts started early with a foundation being created
| shortly after it made it first open source release. It took
| from 2002 to 2006 for the first movie project from the
| foundation, and those projects were necessary as a
| spearheading effort to clean up the core featureset. It
| took roughly another decade of those projects and gradual
| efforts to revise the UX before the public perception
| switch flipped from "Blender sucks" to "Blender's awesome."
| At that point it snowballed and the project is now swimming
| in resources. But there was always a clear point of contact
| in the middle steps that helped make the best use of the
| resources that were there.
|
| GIMP doesn't have a foundation to talk to, other than
| GNOME, which actually makes it harder to engage with
| because it means you have an institution in the way that
| fights ICs. GNOME is infamously bad at outreach efforts for
| its top level applications. What seems to define GNOME, at
| least in the past decade, is that the thing actually being
| developed is the libraries, while the existing apps are
| just being shepherded down the road to keep up. And as long
| as that's the case, the apps will be undermaintained
| because the foundation will gravitate towards a "don't
| touch that" policy for everything that isn't a library
| feature. GIMP has changed very little as a result.
|
| Like, just look at the state of GIMP's developer
| information. It's a dumpsite. Nobody is in a marketing role
| or cleaning up documentation. There is development
| activity, but the bulk of communication about it comes from
| third party sources who aren't touching the code.
| klodolph wrote:
| Maya is $225/month. Photoshop is $21/month. I think that
| explains at least part of it.
| jorvi wrote:
| I did not know it is that stark a difference. Thanks for
| the tidbit!
| seized wrote:
| No, it's not that, it's that they don't use the file manager.
| Linux has DigiKam and DarkTable as native options. Once you
| have lots of photos you don't really use the file manager as
| they can't filter on other metadata like GPS, focal length,
| stars/ratings, etc.
| raffraffraff wrote:
| I'm not even a photographer, I'd just like to be able to find a
| photo organising app on Linux that can do facial recognition as
| well as Picasa could 12+ years ago. It's sad.
| fabianhjr wrote:
| I use Digikam (Organizing) + Darktable (RAW Image Processing)
| on GNOME 42 (NixOS Unstable)
| uncoaxable5 wrote:
| Egoist wrote:
| To add to that, it annoys me that it's still not possible (I know
| an extension exists) to change the default terminal on the right
| click menu "Open in Terminal"
| okamiueru wrote:
| I kinda went through this recently. I had been experimenting
| with both tilix and alacrity. I'm going by memory now on the
| phone, so bear with me. I ended up deleting the apt extension
| thas is actually the functionality behind the default "open in
| terminal". You kan provably find it with a "dpkg -l nautilus |
| grep terminal".
|
| Then I installed some nautilus python package (I don't remember
| the exact name), which seems to be integrated. I also installed
| through there some project that was supposed to add any
| terminal. At the end it showed multiple entries for alacrity
| and tilix. So I uninstalled the package. And suddenly then I
| had just the entries for the terminals I used.
|
| That said... It's not great that nautilus doesn't respect
| x-terminal-emulator. That is exactly what it is for.
| HKH2 wrote:
| That's the Gnome ethos of being against customizability.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Gnome specifically developed an API for this use case: https:
| //gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/nautilus/-/tree/master/libnau...
|
| You can place your own custom actions in
| ~/.local/share/nautilus/scripts if you don't like the API,
| any file with execute permissions will appear in a "scripts"
| submenu in the nautilus context menu.
|
| There have been several helper programs that interface with
| the API for you to allow you to add custom options without
| writing any code, but nobody seems to maintain them for long.
| I guess the feature simply isn't popular enough.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| The reason for that is that the menu item you're seeing isn't a
| feature of the file manager, it's a feature of the terminal
| emulator itself hooking into the file manager. You can see how
| it works here:
| https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/console/-/tree/main/nautilus If
| you uninstall GNOME Console, you'll see the menu item
| disappear.
|
| Any terminal emulator developer can hook into the Nautilus API
| if they wish to do so. This approach is no different from the
| Windows approach, actually.
|
| As very few developers care enough to integrate with Nautilus,
| I've written a shell script that launches my terminal of
| choice, moved /usr/bin/gnome-terminal to /usr/bin/gnome-
| terminal.old and placed the script in the original place with
| execute permissions. It's far from perfect, but it's easier
| than learning the Nautilus API and submitting a pull request.
| [deleted]
| forgotpwd16 wrote:
| >is being almost neglected
|
| Not sure whether it's negligence or result of GNOME's _vision_.
| agilob wrote:
| Dolphin (KDE file manager) is simply peak of GUI file managers
| for me. I can't even think of one functionality it lacks that I
| would use
| formerly_proven wrote:
| ... and it's integrated with the best terminal emulator in the
| observable universe; what's not to love?
| raytube wrote:
| My old moan would be multi file copy to something like usb. In
| the end I discovered, if I create a folder on the desktop, copied
| items, and then copied the folder. The process was far less
| painful. Or just drop to the CLI and rsync. But cherry picking
| files to copy is a drag.
|
| Common use case though.
| monkeybutton wrote:
| The biggest pet peeve I have is creating a new file/folder in an
| already populated folder. You can't right click anywhere without
| opening a context menu for a file. Getting a context menu for the
| folder itself to show can be an impossible fight at times.
| dylan-m wrote:
| I can't remember what version this changed in, but in the
| header bar you can right click any of the folder breadcrumbs to
| open a context menu. Once you have 42, there's actually a menu
| button for the current folder, and you can click anywhere in
| the breadcrumbs area to activate it. It's the best way to do
| things in the current folder ;)
| [deleted]
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Nautilus I fell in love with in Ubuntu 6.06 was miles better than
| the current one found in Ubuntu ~20.04.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| 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.
| jotm wrote:
| 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
| zorr wrote:
| 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.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| 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.
| simion314 wrote:
| >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?
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| Not OP, but plasmashell, activitymanagerd, recently
| krunner. The first two because I have a sshfs mount, the
| latter only recently for no good reason.
| simion314 wrote:
| >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.
| alex3305 wrote:
| > - 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.
| Stratoscope wrote:
| 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.
| mynameismon wrote:
| Fun fact: Windows Explorer also has the same hotkey for
| typing out the path.
| lucumo wrote:
| As do all browsers. It seems to be a standard.
|
| ...still doesn't work for Finder though.
| klodolph wrote:
| I mean, it's just command-shift-G, which you can discover
| from the "Go" menu.
| tomrod wrote:
| Where is the "command" key on my Linux box?
| klodolph wrote:
| 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".
| marcodiego wrote:
| Not very discoverable, but just like on the browser, hit
| ctrl+l.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| I think that you need to press Ctrl+L to type a path.
| dcminter wrote:
| 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!
| jeroenhd wrote:
| 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.
| johnny22 wrote:
| i actually prefer the pills by default, but what I don't
| like is that it's not clear you can switch.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| 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.
| seiferteric wrote:
| You don't even need that, you can just start typing the path
| and the path bar will show up on top.
| dijit wrote:
| Which incidentally is the same hot key used to go to the url
| bar on browsers
| throwaway48375 wrote:
| I've always used ALT-D.
| _Microft wrote:
| Mnemonic: _L_ for _Location_
| goosedragons wrote:
| 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.
| cassepipe wrote:
| 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.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| 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.
| goosedragons wrote:
| 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.
| phoronixrly wrote:
| 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.
| tomrod wrote:
| 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)
| zozbot234 wrote:
| MATE is the Gnome2 fork, Cinnamon forks Gnome3.
| jorvi wrote:
| You are much better off using Overgrive. Last time I used
| the integrated Google Drive / Dropbox sync in any distro,
| the performance was abysmal.
| pmontra wrote:
| I'm on Ubuntu 20.04 with GNOME and I installed Nemo because
| of type ahead search. It works well.
| Jnr wrote:
| 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.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| 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.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| >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.
| rstat1 wrote:
| 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.
| satsuma wrote:
| 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.
| protomyth wrote:
| 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.
| Affric wrote:
| raffraffraff wrote:
| Finder is shite. I've had to use Mac OS for the past month
| and I hate it.
| robotburrito wrote:
| Agreed, I'm not even a windows person, but it's file manager
| is pretty awesome compared to Gnome and Mac OS IMO.
| klodolph wrote:
| 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.
| thederf wrote:
| I've used GNOME for so long that anything _other_ than Nautilus
| feels clunky to me. Though to be fair I almost never search for
| anything, so those pain points don 't bother me. I just want a
| file manager that gets out of my way.
| lloydatkinson wrote:
| Sometimes if I have to use Linux, one of the most frustrating
| parts of the gnome file manager is how on some distros the path
| text input at the top is simply not there in some distros. It
| used to be there all the time. I don't know why this essential
| feature was removed/hidden behind impossible to find settings.
| simion314 wrote:
| >Sometimes if I have to use Linux, one of the most frustrating
| parts of the gnome file manager is how on some distros the path
| text input at the top is simply not there in some distros. It
| used to be there all the time. I don't know why this essential
| feature was removed/hidden behind impossible to find settings.
|
| I only speculate. some distros like Ubuntu were undoing some
| GNOME feature removal shit because they were listening for user
| feedback, so the difference could be that some distros are
| shipping GNOME vanilla(as their big ego designer intended) and
| some are trying to undo some damage with patches , extensions
| and different defaults.
| superkuh wrote:
| Not only impossible to find, the gtk3/4 devs actually changed
| the underlying gtk versions to stop respecting gsettings to
| enable pathbar even if the user did find and set it. But they
| didn't remove the gsettings. They're just non-functional.
|
| And because it's gtk3/4 not only the desktop environment
| applications are effected. All gtk3/4 using applications are.
| Things went downhill quickly after ~2014.
| mackal wrote:
| I got told by a GNOME dev on reddit that I use my file browser
| wrong when I complained about lack of type-ahead search. I've
| switched to KDE since.
| rstat1 wrote:
| I got told the same thing here once when I complained about the
| lack of type-ahead-search, by someone who apparently thinks
| that sort of thing is too confusing to people who aren't
| technical.
| smoldesu wrote:
| > I understand GNOME lacks resources, but oh boy, when I see
| developers' time and effort spent on endlessly redesigning and
| rewriting core apps, I wonder: is that really necessary?
|
| Relative to the rest of the desktop development scene? That's
| bullshit. GNOME has more resources, paid volunteers and users
| than anyone else in the scene. That's why it's so embarrassing
| that they can't get extensibility right, and they can't even make
| defaults that their users will agree on. They're shooting
| themselves in the foot and complaining when nobody wants to treat
| their gaping wound.
| loudmax wrote:
| As far as I can tell, the GNOME philosophy is that the proper
| level for the operating system to manage fundamental operating
| system tasks like hardware detection, filesystems and network
| interfaces is at the desktop level. So that's where they put
| their resources.
|
| In this light, they fall far short of the resources they need
| for proper QA and user testing.
| throw7 wrote:
| The thumbnail problem goes back to a beginning mistake of
| aggregating and hash indexing all thumbnails into one directory.
| They should have just followed the solution from the xv viewer
| and supported .xvpics. The reason they've never fixed such basic
| ux things is just gnome developers being gnome developers.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| KDE is just so much better. Dolphin is a pleasure to use.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Is there an easy way to store my KDE environment in a dotfile?
| KDE seems like it _can be_ the perfect DE given enough
| customization. How do I maintain and reuse that customization
| (aside from something like Nix)?
| approxim8ion wrote:
| KDE stores a lot of dotfiles. I have had luck preserving my
| config because I don't wipe my root folder, but aside from
| that it's quite hard to migrate from one PC to another.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| It's been while since I used it but I think all KDE
| applications store configuration in $HOME. I don't remember
| any global registry nonsense like in GNOME and Windows.
| jorvi wrote:
| The few times I got annoyed by Gnome its 'my way or the
| highway' approach and switched to KDE, I whiplashed back to
| Gnome within a day due to how buggy and perplexing a lot of the
| decisions in KDE are.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| That's fair. I also left KDE because I wanted a simpler
| system with less dependencies. I couldn't tolerate GNOME and
| all the alternatives so I just dropped the entire concept of
| an integrated desktop environment.
|
| I installed i3 and it changed the way I use computers forever
| but I still miss many of the KDE applications. I wish there
| was a way to use them without bringing in the rest of KDE
| with them.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| >it changed the way I use computers forever
|
| Can you tell us more? I don't know a lot about i3, but that
| sounds interesting!
| throwaway67743 wrote:
| i use dolphin with gnome, gnome is a nice ux in general but
| lacks a lot, as was highlighted.. mixing elements is the only
| way to get a useful experience unfortunately
| jklinger410 wrote:
| KDE breaks every time you touch it. Not sure why all of these
| picky commenters leave that out every time we discuss DEs.
| TheCapeGreek wrote:
| KDE either works flawlessly and one praises it endlessly, or
| you change one setting and everything crashes at the
| slightest touch. I'm unfortunately in the latter camp having
| tried it twice over the years.
|
| My biggest issue was this:
| https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=426644 I've settled on
| Manjaro GNOME right now because while it's not as
| customisable as say Cinnamon (which I started having issues
| with after the latest release - mainly workspace switching
| gradually grinding to a halt) it seems more stable than KDE.
|
| Don't have the energy to rice XFCE. There really isn't a DE
| that "just works".
| approxim8ion wrote:
| > Not sure why all of these picky commenters leave that out
| every time we discuss DEs.
|
| Because it's a lie.
| Gualdrapo wrote:
| Because it is not true. Or at least, that hasn't been my
| experience in the last 13 years I've been using it.
| jklinger410 wrote:
| Have you ever changed the theme?
| approxim8ion wrote:
| Just did.
|
| KDE is more stable than ever before. I'm on 5.24.4 on
| Arch, fwiw.
| smoldesu wrote:
| I always change the theme, I've never really had it
| break. Most of the time I'll leave it on "Breeze" though
| and just change the colorscheme, but I seldom see it
| break in a way that's not immediately fixable (eg.
| switching icons to dark mode). Even when I did play with
| custom KDE themes, I never noticed it break much more
| than GNOME did with custom themes.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Yes
| michaelmrose wrote:
| They don't discuss it because its not their experience in the
| first place.
|
| Plasma has the second biggest share behind gnome without
| being the default on many distros. Did you really think a
| quarter of Linux users sat in a constantly crashing
| environment saying well this is fine while their computers
| are on fire?
|
| https://linux-hardware.org/?view=os_de&colors=30
|
| KDE doesn't have IBM/Red Hat's resources behind it. Bugs are
| fixed and rolled out in new versions of libraries including
| KDE libraries and supporting libraries from outside KDE. If
| fixes aren't backported and if you use a version with 19
| known issues that aren't ever going to be fixed and aren't
| worth reporting because they in fact have already been fixed
| in libraries you wont have access to for the next 2 years
| then your experience will not match someone who is actually
| running recent software.
|
| I remember demoing netrunner years back when it shipped an
| edition that was based on Ubuntu with KDE. Everything crashed
| constantly. If this was my first experience with KDE I might
| have incorrectly come to the conclusion that KDE was
| unstable. In fact Netrunner made a shit show of shipping a
| combined package that just didn't work effectively.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| I left that out because KDE never once broke when I used it.
| [deleted]
| guessbest wrote:
| Konqeror was the best.
| flatiron wrote:
| I feel like you can change dolphin "into" any file manager you
| want. It's so configurable and really is a pleasure to use.
| Gualdrapo wrote:
| It's true, you can use another file manager as your default
| in KDE, via the settings application. Don't take my word on
| this but it's something you can do as early as since the
| KDE4.x days, when Dolphin was starting out and people were
| used to Konqueror.
| RedShift1 wrote:
| KDE 3.5 had all the knobs you could imagine and probably
| had more than KDE today
| kroltan wrote:
| I understood flatiron to mean you can configure Dolphin to
| look and/or behave similarly to other file managers, not
| that you can literally swap it, even though you might be
| able to.
| diskzero wrote:
| Original Nautilus developer here. This really distressing, but
| not surprising, given the various issues GNOME has had over the
| years. I wish I could come up with a solution, other than raising
| a large amount of cash and creating another entity like Eazel who
| would have the same amount of focus and concern for the user
| experience the original team did.
|
| 1999-2001 Nautilus didn't have type ahead search as far as I can
| recall, but the search, thumbnail and icon layout issues were all
| things I worked on. I am pretty sure thumbnail generation was
| quick, icon layout was stable and search was decent. If not, Andy
| and Darin would have been on top of us to fix is ASAP.
| alyandon wrote:
| Thank you for being part of creating a usable Linux desktop
| back in the day. Even though I long since migrated to Unity and
| KDE desktops I really appreciate the work.
| Shorel wrote:
| What about the simple selection of several files with the
| mouse? And then dragging that selection over another Nautilus
| window?
|
| Instead of moving the files, the dragging action removes the
| selection, making it unusable for the most basic folder task.
|
| Nautilus is so broken I prefer to use the console for most file
| related tasks.
| mnahkies wrote:
| What you just describes definitely works in modern versions
| of Nautilus. Just checked on fedora 34.
|
| I have a nagging memory that this may not have worked in the
| past though.
|
| I actually find Nautilus perfectly fine to use. My biggest
| gripe is sometimes it's difficult to right click to get a
| context menu that isn't a file selection (ie: to create a new
| folder when you're in the list view)
| joombaga wrote:
| > Nautilus is so broken I prefer to use the console for most
| file related tasks.
|
| I feel this way about every file manager. If there was a CLI
| file save dialog I'd never see Finder or Explorer or
| Nautilus.
| anthk wrote:
| Rox Filer is what Nautilus should've been.
|
| Blazing fast, good console/terminal integration, RoxLib.
| flatiron wrote:
| Was the nautilus business plan
|
| 1) create file manager
|
| 2) ?
|
| 3) profit!
| diskzero wrote:
| You are getting down-voted, but I understand your comment as
| the history of Eazel will become less known as time passes.
| The company was only around for a couple of years.
|
| There actually was a business plan and it involved
| configuration services and remote storage of files and
| settings. I thought it was a pretty good concept and the
| success of various companies over the years providing these
| services validate our business plan.
|
| As to why Eazel failed, well there were many factors. The dot
| com crash, Microsoft pressuring OEMS like Dell and Gateway to
| not ship Linux pre-installed and the return of Steve Jobs to
| Apple were just some of them.
| flatiron wrote:
| It was no surprise when easel fizzled out. At the time i
| was really wondering where the income was going to be. But
| thanks for the nice file manager. Hopefully you got to work
| with hertzfeld. That alone would have been worth the price
| of admission.
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| Nautilus was just one component of Eazel's general push for a
| business-ready Linux desktop.
| anthk wrote:
| Helix Gnome?
| Jiejeing wrote:
| I do not know about the other issues, but I imagine most
| pictures taken nowadays, compared to the early 2000s, are in a
| much higher resolution than what is possible to process in a
| very fast way (without HW acceleration). The only way is to
| watch pictures being added to the disk and process them ASAP,
| which is a bit more involved than many users like (and adds
| hidden costs to the simple "copy" operation).
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Aren't thumbnails already embedded in the picture metadata
| usually? I don't know if they actually need to process every
| single picture to generate it, so the size should not be that
| bit of a factor. I'm not sure how nautilus deals with
| pictures though
| viraptor wrote:
| There may be done image formats with thumbnails in
| metadata, but in general, no. You have to generate them.
| Which makes sense too since you'll need multiple sizes of
| them, depending on your use case.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Thank you for creating Nautilis, I've been using it since 2006.
|
| Just out of curiosity, what DE do you use these days?
| diskzero wrote:
| You may be disappointed by my answer, but I have been a Mac
| user since 2001. Steve Jobs hired as many of the Eazel team
| members who wanted to come to Apple when the company closed.
| Many of us took the offer and other went to Android, Google,
| Red Hat and elsewhere. At Apple, I worked on Finder,
| Spotlight, Time Machine and other projects. Feel free to
| flame me about those. I'll accept some responsibility for the
| issues those projects have.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Wow that's an impressive portfolio! I don't know why
| exactly, but I really like time machine. I'm not sure if
| it's a usually disliked piece of software, but at least for
| me it makes back ups so much easier. Especially for my
| girlfriend who is not very technical.
|
| Thank you for your work!
| smoldesu wrote:
| I won't flame you over it, but I _will_ say that if it wasn
| 't for your later work, I wouldn't be using Linux on the
| desktop :p
|
| All's well that ends well, I suppose!
| digisign wrote:
| How does one get involved in writing these kind of apps? I once
| looked into gnome2/mate development but only found a few books
| that were 10+ years old, and that was several years ago. Would
| prefer Python over C, but maybe that is not possible for core
| apps.
| diskzero wrote:
| If there is an open source project out there that you want to
| be involved in, you just start contributing. Either find an
| open issue you want to fix, or identify some feature or
| improvement that you would like to see and implement it. This
| sounds simplistic, but this is really how you can get your
| start. Starting a new project and getting mind share and
| traction is a lot of work, so it is often a better use of
| your time to get involved in an existing project that aligns
| with your interests. Good luck!
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > you just start contributing
|
| Before doing anything I think it's wise to look at how
| other contributors were treated. Sometimes maintainers just
| aren't very open to contribution. Gotta pick one's battles,
| otherwise it can lead to a lot of wasted effort. Spending
| time exploring a complex codebase and formulating a patch
| set only to end up being ignored can be a very negative
| experience.
| [deleted]
| CameronNemo wrote:
| I used to use the elementary file manager and it was great...
| Then they started adding features that were really bad. Like they
| would try to calculate the size of a directory and its contents
| when you would just _hover_ over the directory. For a directory
| with a lot of files that can be a CPU intensive task. My file
| manager was literally pegging one of the cores on my poor already
| overworked pinebook pro. For a feature I didn 't ask for and
| which had no way to be disabled from the ui. Not wanting to poke
| around dconf, I tried a handful of file managers and settled on
| nemo. It just works, has a decent number of toggles, is
| leightweight. The familiar name was a bonus ;)
|
| The one thing I miss from elementary's file manager is the column
| view.
| smoldesu wrote:
| A lot of elementary stuff was fantastic, if they had the nerve
| to fork their stuff from GNOME then I think there would have
| been a lot of people (myself included) who jumped on their
| bandwagon. Unfortunately it looks like EOS is on it's last legs
| right now, so I guess we can only watch and see what the future
| holds. Dolphin is fine too, I guess...
| tencentshill wrote:
| amelius wrote:
| That's nothing compared to the "argument list too long" problem
| in plain vanilla Linux.
| post-it wrote:
| Like when you glob (*) too many files in the terminal?
| amelius wrote:
| Yes. I have 64GB of memory, yet I get these errors for
| filename lists that should take less than 0.1% of it.
|
| At least GNOME file manager does not give up.
| efficax wrote:
| the answer isn't: it's fine because it's linux and you can use
| something else. The answer is: ok, it's broken, but it's GNU: you
| can fix it yourself!
| jotm wrote:
| Yeah, you can fix everything yourself. Up until you get tired
| of fixing and just use a normal OS that isn't breaking
| something random every update.
|
| To be honest, if you "freeze" an installation (i.e. never
| update anything), it works pretty well!
|
| The difference between server and desktop packages seems to be
| professionalism - the latter just aren't developed/maintained
| to the same standards as the former. I love Linux and what you
| can do with theming, though, it's quite amazing.
| lazyier wrote:
| Or you can just acknowledge that all software comes with warts,
| problems, and limitations.
|
| And be thankful that you can use whatever manager you want. And
| don't have to use Apple's file manager.
| jatone wrote:
| except that isn't the answer gnome is notorious for being a
| pain to work with if it doesn't align with their vision.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Case study: https://youtu.be/ON0A1dsQOV0
| criddell wrote:
| I hope you like maintaining a fork forever, because that's the
| most likely outcome.
| traverseda wrote:
| Gnome makes it really hard to fix these kinds of things
| yourself without forking the entirety of Gnome.
| dylan-m wrote:
| At this point, Nautilus really is just a file manager! It
| isn't the file chooser; it doesn't mount external devices; it
| isn't the desktop background.
|
| If something is hindering one's ability to create an
| alternative file manager, there is probably a completely
| uncontroversial patch that can be sent upstream.
| thebeastie wrote:
| This "you can fix it yourself" argument is really tiring
| sometimes.
|
| For a project like nautilus, there are very few people with the
| resources and motivation to fix anything. So we end up with
| underdeveloped open source products.
|
| Maybe we should try "we need better funding and coordination"
| for open source projects.
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| Not only that, but the people who do have the resources and
| motivation quickly hit the brick wall that is contributing to
| Gnome. Engaging with the Gnome team from the outside is
| exhausting.
| tebruno99 wrote:
| Gnome developers actively discourage fixing things yourself
| even though they often use that as a reply to bug reports.
| Fixes are often rejected as "not bugs" so most just give up
| and move on.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| I think most open source projects need better funding and
| coordination. The fact of the matter is that if you want
| something, you can ask nicely, pay for it or make it
| yourself. Asking nicely usually ends with "no", which is a
| perfectly valid response, and the other options are often too
| expensive (nobody wants to pay full dev time for adding and
| maintaining feature in Nautilus) or too much work.
|
| I used to think that surely the GNOME people had enough
| resources to develop feature X until I saw how few GNOME
| developers there really are for a project this size. Until
| more people join in and start developing in their free time,
| "basic" features people all want so badly simply won't appear
| any time soon.
| bloopernova wrote:
| I just want a good column based gnome file browser like MacOS'
| finder.
|
| Although sometimes it feels like I'm one of very few who use
| column view.
| Jerry2 wrote:
| Blog post mentions Cinnamon's nemo as not having the same issues
| as Nautilus and I have to agree. I've been distro-hopping for
| years (just to keep myself current) and Nemo is by far the best
| and most stable file manager for GNU/Linux. macOS' Finder is the
| only FM that's nicer but Nemo has few things that makes it even
| better than Finder. All in all, I'm super-happy with nemo! Kudos
| to Cinnamon team. And don't forget to donate to them! [1]
|
| [1] https://www.linuxmint.com/donors.php
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| Nemo still doesn't have folder thumbnails, which is an odd
| omission that I feel like shouldn't be that hard to implement.
| It's one of the few things I miss from my windows days when
| navigating through my albums
| Jerry2 wrote:
| > _folder thumbnails_
|
| Is that a Windows feature? I've only ever used macOS and
| GNU/Linux so never got used to that. I just did a quick
| search on their Github Issues page and didn't see it
| requested. You can file a request here:
| https://github.com/linuxmint/nemo/issues
| em-bee wrote:
| https://github.com/flozz/cover-thumbnailer works well for
| creating thumbnails.
| sirius87 wrote:
| I wholeheartedly agree that Nemo provides a far better
| experience than Nautilus.
|
| But Nemo is also not without issues. Crashes when deleting
| files in certain situations (folder tree is expanded and you
| delete all files). If you are using Nemo and use a lot of
| network drives or external drives, be prepared for random
| freezes.
|
| When that freeze happens, killing Nemo doesn't help, nemo -q
| doesn't help, restarting cinnamon doesn't help. That's when I
| fire up the ol' trusted Thunar.
| Jerry2 wrote:
| Please file any bugs you come across on their Github page!
| From my experience, they fix crashes quickly. I came across a
| similar issue a while back and they fixed it in the next
| release.
|
| https://github.com/linuxmint/nemo/issues
| zekica wrote:
| The worst bug with nemo is when handling remote filesystems, it
| switches to a some kind of fallback mode that disables keyboard
| shortcuts and context menu options but drag/drop still works
| and you have to kill it to continue working.
| smm11 wrote:
| Right about the time Nautilus was Eazle, something like that,
| some other effort had Navigator as your desktop/browser/file
| manager.
|
| But I can't recall much else. Anyone?
| eloisius wrote:
| I used Nautilus for a little while and ran into all of these same
| issues. Since I use i3 and not Gnome, I decided to replace it
| with another file manager rather than deal with the headache. I'm
| using xfe. It had the power user oriented features I want, but
| don't love it either. The icons are rendered very badly on a HDPI
| screen. I guess I'm still searching for the right file manager.
| selfhifive wrote:
| Tried Dolphin?
| vondur wrote:
| There used to be a way to have Gnome use Nemo as the default file
| manager vs Nautilus, but that was years ago. I have no idea if it
| works with the most current versions of Gnome at this point.
| bpfrh wrote:
| It works and I do that everytime I setup fedora.
|
| A quick google search shows: xdg-mime default nemo.desktop
| inode/directory application/x-gnome-saved-search
|
| You then have to add nemo to your applications, via alacarte.
|
| Full answer is at:
| https://askubuntu.com/questions/981440/change-default-gnome-...
| Pxtl wrote:
| On the "search" thing - one accidental feature of browsers that I
| appreciate is the clear demarcation between "find (on this page)"
| and "search".
|
| On any application, if "ctrl-F" does not provide me immediately
| with a terrifylingly fast search-dialog that will scrape through
| literally the thing that is in my current window and nothing
| else, you fail. Period. Ctrl-F is part basic workflow expected
| from modern systems.
|
| Search outside of what's in the current window? FAIL.
|
| Search slowly? FAIL.
|
| Nautilus' behavior would be analogous to spawning a Google search
| when I hit ctrl-F in Firefox.
| callamdelaney wrote:
| The behaviour of search, to search the entire system by default
| rather the the current directory, is really stupid.
| Delk wrote:
| I like it that it includes subdirectories and doesn't just
| filter the current directory but I agree that including
| _everything_ feels both counterintuitive and counterproductive.
|
| If you wanted to search the entire system, that would be
| available from Activities (or whatever the view is called)
| anyway.
| julianlam wrote:
| Ah, wait until you experience the Nautilus file picker. Want to
| attach an image? Here's a list of all your photos in this folder,
| but the preview is 100x50, have fun.
| branon wrote:
| "No thumbnails in the file picker" is a longstanding meme, as I
| understand it. Somewhere there's a >decade-old bug report
| (feature request?) about it.
|
| I don't mind it personally as I happen to be aware enough to be
| able to locate most files without thumbnail previews. But it
| would lessen the cognitive load of using GNOME if they had
| proper thumbnail views.
|
| Maybe when they switch everything to GTK4. One can hope.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| It's not just an old bug/feature request, there are _three_
| working patches that were posted there over the years, all of
| which have just been ignored.
|
| There is a little write-up here: https://lobste.rs/s/ky5yop/g
| nome_has_no_thumbnails_file_pick...
| dylan-m wrote:
| The file picker isn't Nautilus; it's GTK. It's all library
| code, usually running in the same application.
|
| One nice effect of applications moving to FileChooserNative
| (which they need to do if they want to be sandboxed nicely) is
| that for newer applications we can have that file chooser in a
| separate application (with broader permissions).
|
| But even so, right now it's just the GTK file chooser in a
| separate application. In the future, Nautilus will be able to
| provide the file chooser, but that future hasn't arrived quite
| yet. Someone needs to build a file chooser mode for Nautilus,
| and someone needs to add a little more plumbing to xdg-desktop-
| portal so it knows how to deal with an application like
| Nautilus providing a default file chooser. But it will be much
| better, in part because the preview code will all be in one
| place :)
| simion314 wrote:
| Maybe then you can use the KDE File picker on all your apps
| and not be forced to use the shitty GTK2/GTK3 one. I also
| dislike the GTK file picker limited sorting options(maybe was
| improved recently, I prefer sorting to be case insensitive)
| sph wrote:
| This will supposedly be worked on in GNOME 43, fixing the file
| picker should now be possible, as they've completed the
| separation of GTK and GNOME UI code. The new GNOME file picker
| portal will be able to leverage full fat Nautilus to render
| itself.
|
| And yes, Nautilus has some long awaited UI improvements planned
| for that release.
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(page generated 2022-04-14 23:03 UTC)