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Default File Manager with Unity8 in future desktops

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31–40 of 54 posts

Re: Default File Manager with Unity8 in future desktops

#31
post #23
post #13

I liked the days when Ubuntu was a nice, simple distro that I could recommend to beginners. Nowadays, every desktop distro is becoming more and more of an "island". The main "alternative" to Ubuntu, Linux Mint, is also replacing pretty much every piece of the OS with its own (NIH). I would actually like for there to be a nice, simple distro that anybody could use, with only general, vanilla Linux software.

Try elementary OS.

Elementary is amazing but isn't it one of the most NIH-inflicted distros? Custom DE, app manager, dock, I think every app it ships with is theirs, etc. I guess it's a bit more vanilla than the Ubuntu it builds on, but it's all very NIH.

Re: Default File Manager with Unity8 in future desktops

#32
post #21
post #2

Is Ubuntu replacing everything above the Kernel one piece at a time?

Nautilus, like any other software of the GNOME project is subject to the "unexpected" changes by the GNOME team... as when they decided to remove the type-ahead-find feature. As long as the Ubuntu team create better software and replace "bad pieces" I'm with them.

I spent a good chunk of time restoring type-ahead find to Nautilus, which is now available in trusty-proposed (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nautilus/+bug/1164...).

Now I read this. Not very happy.

Re: Default File Manager with Unity8 in future desktops

#33

I bet it's gonna be a file manager useable by power users with built in terminal, full copypastable path shown by default, ability to navigate inside of zip files as if they're directories, tree view, directory bookmarks, etc... Ah wait, no, that are the features of file managers of 10 years ago, after that they only got dumbed down to target regular joe. Yay progress.

Sounds like you're looking for Dolphin, which is both widely used and actively developed and supported.

Re: Default File Manager with Unity8 in future desktops

#34

I bet it's gonna be a file manager useable by power users with built in terminal, full copypastable path shown by default, ability to navigate inside of zip files as if they're directories, tree view, directory bookmarks, etc... Ah wait, no, that are the features of file managers of 10 years ago, after that they only got dumbed down to target regular joe. Yay progress.

Ubuntu have made it really clear that they want to be a competitor to Windows and be very different from typical Linux operating systems. If you're using Ubuntu and expected it to be like Debian, you made the wrong choice of operating system. In my opinion, Ubuntu and Debian are both great, but they are targeting massively different types of users.

Re: Default File Manager with Unity8 in future desktops

#35
post #27
post #4

I don't like the NIH syndrome, but I like using what's probably the most popular distro and especially the software variety in the community PPAs. So what's the best way to get a more vanilla Linux desktop experience without losing the convenience of the Ubuntu PPA ecosystem? Use a Ubuntu remix? Can you use PPAs with Debian? Or do you not even need them with the cutting-edge Debian variant (whatever it's called again…

I switched to Arch Linux after the Amazon fiasco and can only say I wish I did sooner. It's marvelous, and if you think Ubuntu's PPAs are good, you need to see the AUR. I think I've done the `./configure && make && sudo make install` thing literally once on this system, and it wasn't because the tool wasn't in the AUR, but because I needed special compile flags with vim.

Just to add to this, even for the special-compile-flags case, you shouldn't need to go the manual-make road; you can easily customize packages with the ABS (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ABS) and use them like AUR package (I used a customized gtk3 for a while using this method, and it worked wonderfully).

Re: Default File Manager with Unity8 in future desktops

#36
post #13

I liked the days when Ubuntu was a nice, simple distro that I could recommend to beginners. Nowadays, every desktop distro is becoming more and more of an "island". The main "alternative" to Ubuntu, Linux Mint, is also replacing pretty much every piece of the OS with its own (NIH). I would actually like for there to be a nice, simple distro that anybody could use, with only general, vanilla Linux software.

If you want a very reliable/stable desktop OS and are not set on using Linux you might want to consider FreeBSD or PCBSD instead. The perpetual alpha/beta quality of most popular Linux distros plus increasingly fragmentation between makes BSD a better choice for me these days.

Re: Default File Manager with Unity8 in future desktops

#37
post #2

Is Ubuntu replacing everything above the Kernel one piece at a time?

In the case of nautilus, they're right. Gnome developers are slowly becoming delusional and losing track of what they're supposed to accomplish. Therefore, its time to put Gnome aside and build something new.

Re: Default File Manager with Unity8 in future desktops

#38
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any examples of file managers like this from back then?

KDE Konqueror

For the record, Dolphin has all of those features as well (although text-path-by-default and open-zipfile-as-folder both need to be enabled manually).

Re: Default File Manager with Unity8 in future desktops

#39
Canonical have an interesting challenge. The people who are most aware of their product are not their target market, and seem to actively dislike the direction their product is headed in. Worse, those people seem to be under the impression that they are the users that Canonical are targeting.

In my opinion, this phenomena might sufficiently explain why "desktop Linux" never went mainstream. No previous "desktop Linux" company was so willing to ignore the desires of existing Linux users in order to make a product that would be good for their target market. Canonical do seem to be bold enough to have a good chance at pulling it off despite their critics, though.

Re: Default File Manager with Unity8 in future desktops

#40
post #21
post #2

Is Ubuntu replacing everything above the Kernel one piece at a time?

Nautilus, like any other software of the GNOME project is subject to the "unexpected" changes by the GNOME team... as when they decided to remove the type-ahead-find feature. As long as the Ubuntu team create better software and replace "bad pieces" I'm with them.

I used to love Nautilus. It's gotten steadily worse year by year.
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