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Thunar file manager - versatile and impressive

Submitted by Uraeus on Tue, 2007-03-13 11:32. GTK
GTK

There is a review of the Thunar file manager on the linuxondesktop blog. Thunar was created for use with XFCE but works fine with GNOME also. Could be an interesting alternative if Nautilus is not your flavour.

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But no FTP/SSH support by Anonymous George (not verified)
no ssh :(( by Anonymous George (not verified)
compact list by Anonymous George (not verified)
'The #1 annoyance in by Anonymous George (not verified)

It doesn't work fine as a

Submitted by Anonymous George (not verified) on Tue, 2007-03-13 13:55.

It doesn't work fine as a replacement for nautilus because unlike a browser, mail client, any other app, GNOME doesn't give the user any choice. Nautilus is hard-coded in as a piece of GNOME. It would be nice if you could, via a prefs panel or g-conf key, set your file manager, but you can't. You still have to have Nautilus to draw the desktop and any time you launch a file or browse a folder, it will use Nautilus. What's the alternative? Use Thunar and do a lot of browsing to get where you want or use one of the scripts that exists to make it a semi-replacement. Those scripts aren't a good solutiona and don't cover all cases. Thunar is awesome, but using it in GNOME sucks.

Well, I think that's just

Submitted by Anonymous George (not verified) on Tue, 2007-03-13 22:16.

Well, I think that's just it. To use Thunar as a replacement for Nautilus, Thunar needs to draw the desktop. The session manager, window manager, and panel aren't really tied to Nautilus in any way. It's just that Nautilus is the only file manager out there right now that supports all of the functionality currently used by Gnome (desktop management, launchers, and uri's like burn:/// and computer:///). As long as your replacement can do all of this, Nautilus can be removed. Unfortunately, Thunar doesn't do all of this, so you can't really use it in the place of Nautilus.

I suppose you could argue for splitting up Nautilus into separate components, so that alternative file managers could be used for just the file managing aspect. This has been done to some extent already (ex: embedded viewers have been replaced with external viewers), and I think there is a desire to do more. But Nautilus development is already stretched pretty thin, and it's not a real priority for now.

I finally replaced Nautilus today, and it was EASY!

Submitted by Anonymous George (not verified) on Tue, 2007-03-13 21:47.

I love GTK+ over any of the other toolkits, but I do not use most default apps and I have hated Nautilus from the beginning. Why? Simply because it's _too_ slow. I was thrilled when Thunar came along and became stable for everyday use (0.8 is rock solid).

Here is how you replace Nautilus on the GNOME desktop:

1) Goto System > Preferences > Sessions:

In the Current Sessions tab, and you will see Nautilus running.

Change the style to Normal. (You don't want it to restart)

2) Kill all running Nautilus processes.

3) Install Thunar and xfdesktop4 (This is XFCE's stand alone desktop
manager)

4) After successful installation, add xfdesktop to your default sessions. (You want this to start when you log-in)

5) Still in sessions, set it up for xfdesktop to Restart if it dies and save the session.

6) There is no step six, because that beast Nautilus doesnt manage your desktop anymore, and you finally have a fast, extensible file manager with a low memory footprint with customizable actions!

- concept10 -

BTW, this is on Ubuntu Feisty, but should work with any Linux distro with GNOME desktop.

BTW2, im trying to figure out what kind of dependencies my system have on Nautilus because im about to purge it from my system.

That's not true. You can use by Anonymous George (not verified)

I can use Thunar with GNOME

Submitted by Anonymous George (not verified) on Tue, 2007-03-13 17:43.

I can use Thunar with GNOME just fine.

Perhaps you could be more specific about your problem?

Ahhhh, Gnome... by Anonymous George (not verified)
WTF ? by Anonymous George (not verified)
Ability to switch file by Anonymous George (not verified)