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View Full Version : Why isn't nautilus split pane?



Warpnow
May 25th, 2009, 10:58 PM
It would improve my productivity ten fold if I could make nautilus split pane with two separate folders showed on each side. One could even be an FTP folder. But just the general task of moving folders would be so much easier.

Bookmarks do make things easier. I can add one then drag to it, but just...it would be so much easier if I could a split pane. Anyone else ever wonder why seemingly simple features are overlooked? I believe KDE's file manager does this, but I dislike KDE.

Anyone know of a file manager that does it and comes with few dependencies outside of gnome? I really am a gnome fan on newer hardware.

tsali
May 25th, 2009, 11:03 PM
Midnight Commander

I'm not a huge advocate of CLI, but this is one case where it's truly hard to beat.

The command is "mc".

gn2
May 25th, 2009, 11:14 PM
Tried Dolphin yet?

Warpnow
May 25th, 2009, 11:16 PM
I am also surprised there seems to be no easy way to tile two windows. Windows Explorer even does this (gag), where you can right click on the task bar and do "Cascade Veritcally" or such on a group of explorer windows, and they all are side by side.

This is something I've thought about since day 1 of trying linux but just now decided to post.

Warpnow
May 25th, 2009, 11:16 PM
Tried Dolphin yet?

I have, but using it in gnome is a bit odd. It doesn't seem to look right.

Plus, the apt-get says..

After this operation, 58.1MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]?


Eek.

zurack
May 25th, 2009, 11:23 PM
I have, but using it in gnome is a bit odd. It doesn't seem to look right.

Plus, the apt-get says..

After this operation, 58.1MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]?


Eek.


Is that because of QT dependencies?

gn2
May 25th, 2009, 11:23 PM
58mb? That's nothing in these days of 500gb+ hard drives.
Give it a try, you can always remove it if you don't like it.

Dolphin is pretty lightweight in RAM use (massively lighter than Nautilus) and is my favourite file browser by miles.

kerry_s
May 25th, 2009, 11:24 PM
tried gnome-commander? like mc but gui: http://www.nongnu.org/gcmd/shots.html

it's in the repo's

Namtabmai
May 25th, 2009, 11:27 PM
because it hates you

Warpnow
May 25th, 2009, 11:47 PM
I tried all of the above and a few others. BScommander is also nice. Dolphin is nice, of course, but the forced using of KDE icons is a tad annoying.

I really do like nautilus, its just the lack of one feature that annoys me.

dragos240
May 25th, 2009, 11:50 PM
Why not just open up another tab in nautilus.

Tibuda
May 25th, 2009, 11:52 PM
Why not just open up another tab in nautilus.

It is not the same thing.

Warpnow
May 25th, 2009, 11:58 PM
It is not the same thing.

Agreed. Its not the same as being able to independently navigate the file trees at the same time.

dragos240
May 26th, 2009, 12:00 AM
what about tkmc?

RiceMonster
May 26th, 2009, 12:10 AM
1) Open another window
2) Place by other nautilus window

I don't understand why that isn't good enough.

albinootje
May 26th, 2009, 12:14 AM
Anyone know of a file manager that does it and comes with few dependencies outside of gnome?

You might want to test xfe (sudo apt-get install xfe).
It can even do two panels and one tree-view at the same time.

http://roland65.free.fr/xfe/index.php?page=screenshots

Warpnow
May 26th, 2009, 12:19 AM
1) Open another window
2) Place by other nautilus window

I don't understand why that isn't good enough.

It wastes time. Not to mention the fact that it is problematic when reorganizing multiple files to keep the windows in a position where you can drag from one to the other on a lower resolution screen.

Warpnow
May 26th, 2009, 12:21 AM
You might want to test xfe (sudo apt-get install xfe).
It can even do two panels and one tree-view at the same time.

http://roland65.free.fr/xfe/index.php?page=screenshots


Mmm, I do like XFE.

So far my favorites are XFE and BScommander.

Dharmachakra
May 26th, 2009, 12:21 AM
PCManFM? I believe it does what you want.

jrusso2
May 26th, 2009, 12:25 AM
I think you want http://emelfm2.net/

Warpnow
May 26th, 2009, 12:26 AM
PCManFM? I believe it does what you want.

Mmm...if it does I can't figure out how.

I think I now have like every file manager installed, haha.

directcharitycontribution
May 26th, 2009, 12:28 AM
it is a pane

albinootje
May 26th, 2009, 12:34 AM
Here's more choice :
http://168hours.wordpress.com/2008/08/18/10-total-commander-alternatives-for-linux/

hessiess
May 26th, 2009, 12:48 AM
I am also surprised there seems to be no easy way to tile two windows. Windows Explorer even does this (gag), where you can right click on the task bar and do "Cascade Veritcally" or such on a group of explorer windows, and they all are side by side.

This is something I've thought about since day 1 of trying linux but just now decided to post.

Tiling widow manager ;)

Xbehave
May 26th, 2009, 01:18 AM
sort out a kde theme to look nice in gnome, then use dolphin/konqueror
as others have said 58m is nothing (i try and run a tight ship (3.1G /usr), but if i find a good gtk app I'm willing to take a small hit to install it)
The key is picking a nice qt, theme I'm sure there will be a human-like theme for. I use FF in kde i just set it to a good theme and forget its even gtk based.

23meg
May 26th, 2009, 02:13 AM
It wastes time. Not to mention the fact that it is problematic when reorganizing multiple files to keep the windows in a position where you can drag from one to the other on a lower resolution screen.

You can automate it with various combinations of Nautilus command line parameters / wmctrl / Devil's Pie / Compiz.

dspari1
May 26th, 2009, 02:13 AM
I think the reason you hate KDE is because Kubuntu does a bad job at it. If you don't find the file manager that you're looking for, you should try a distro that does KDE well.

Here's a pic of my dolphin

http://i41.tinypic.com/206z9ev.png

chucky chuckaluck
May 26th, 2009, 02:54 AM
you can use your gtk theme for dolphin (it's an option in the systemsettings>appearance>style). the ikon_2 icon set is basically eikon2 for kde.

berndth
May 26th, 2009, 09:42 AM
The reason why it's not split pane is that nobody wrote the code. It's that simple. The developers use Nautilus mainly in spatial mode, where split view is indeed not useful.

I had a shot at it, and did a screencast of this work-in-progress some time ago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqBDEi17l2A

A discussion on the Nautilus mailing list also took place: http://markmail.org/message/qqpzgzanx6ffihrq

People that have something useful to add (code, testing, whatever) should get in touch.

billgoldberg
May 26th, 2009, 10:37 AM
Dolphin is pretty lightweight in RAM use (massively lighter than Nautilus) and is my favourite file browser by miles.

You're kidding right?

When I was using KDE 4.1, Dolphin was the slowest FM I ever used.

And it locked up all the time.

--

To OP:

Tabs.

gn2
May 26th, 2009, 11:44 AM
You're kidding right?

When I was using KDE 4.1, Dolphin was the slowest FM I ever used.

And it locked up all the time.

No, I'm very definitely not kidding.
I suspect your speed and lock-up problems are more likely to have been caused by KDE 4.1 than Dolphin?

Dolphin works perfectly in my standard (Gnome 2.22.3) Ubuntu 8.04 installation.

etnlIcarus
May 26th, 2009, 12:34 PM
I second the dolphin is slow motion (in KDE4.2 and Xfce4.6) but, then, so is nautilus. Long live thunar!
It wastes time. Not to mention the fact that it is problematic when reorganizing multiple files to keep the windows in a position where you can drag from one to the other on a lower resolution screen.Honestly, worst rationalisation I've heard for twin-pane file manager-ing. The only real benefit to be derived from twin-pane file managers is the way it allows automation of cut/copy tasks.

If you're finding organising your windows difficult, I suggest a better window manager. Metacity (I assume you're using metacity) is pretty limited. There's tiling windows managers but a well-configured compiz setup can streamline a lot of tasks and is ultimately less limiting than a two-pane file manager. Setting window rules size-rules, enabling resize info and just leaving window placement in it's default configuration results in this (http://img43.imageshack.us/img43/5276/examplex.jpg) happening on my system. I don't need to move the windows or resize them. They appear in the nearest open space and thanks to the size rules, I can resize them to suit the task at hand, close the window and when I open up another window, they're back to their default size. At this point, if I went back to a twin-pane manager, performing file operations would get a whole lot slower.

Edit: Forgot to mention edge resistance, which is essential.

Edit edit: Oh and I agree with you on the 'why can't linux do the group tiling thing like XP can'. On *nix, that feature would actually be useful.

sertse
May 26th, 2009, 12:39 PM
The reason why it's not split pane is that nobody wrote the code. It's that simple. The developers use Nautilus mainly in spatial mode, where split view is indeed not useful.


Of course the funniest thing is that the first Ubuntu and many distros do is turn off spatial view when packaging. And even in distros like Debian and Fedora where stick to upstream defaults. that's the first thing *users* do ;)

gn2
May 26th, 2009, 12:41 PM
Long live thunar!

Just a shame about the absence of network file browsing.
Would be nice if you didn't have to configure it manually.
Oh, almost forgot, a dual-pane view option would be good too.

sdowney717
May 26th, 2009, 01:02 PM
Nautilus is UNUSABLE on my pentium 2.4 ghz single core with 1GB ram.
It is so slow how can you stand to use it? Click on a folder, goto the bathroom come back. Boil water, change oil in car, all take less time than nautilus.
Seriously, If I click something it takes almost a minute to show a change. I do not understand how it is allowed to do this by anyone.

sdowney717
May 26th, 2009, 01:07 PM
how do you what is the command to RUN Gnome Commander?

I installed thru synaptic.
In the description, it should tell you how to start a program

etnlIcarus
May 26th, 2009, 01:08 PM
Nautilus is UNUSABLE on my pentium 2.4 ghz single core with 1GB ram.
It is so slow how can you stand to use it? Click on a folder, goto the bathroom come back. Boil water, change oil in car, all take less time than nautilus.
Seriously, If I click something it takes almost a minute to show a change. I do not understand how it is allowed to do this by anyone.

If it's that slow, probably a good idea to disable nautilus' thumbnailers/audio preview-thingy.

sdowney717
May 26th, 2009, 01:16 PM
I went thru that before and while it knocked off some time, it really made no effectual improvement.

I just tried gnome-commander and it is SUPER FAST.
It is nice to be able to click and see it happen instantaneously.
I got rid of the blue by setting an option to respect theme colors.

I remember spending some time trying to fix nautilus months ago.

Xbehave
May 28th, 2009, 01:47 PM
I think the reason you hate KDE is because Kubuntu does a bad job at it. If you don't find the file manager that you're looking for, you should try a distro that does KDE well.

Here's a pic of my dolphin

http://i41.tinypic.com/206z9ev.png
Erm i kept hearing that, so i switched to debian, AFAICT its a load of rubbish! sure kubuntu doesn't have the same level of polish as ubuntu, but all you've done in that picture is pick an (IMO horrible) theme. For the stuff kde provides kubuntu is the same (apart from default settings) as any other kde distro, its only the distro specific tools that sort of suck in kubuntu (e.g last time i used adept it crashed and was slow)