Poll: what is the best replacement for Files (the new Nautilus)?

[lads]

So folks here's the digest: GNome is rolling out a new version of its file manager, called Files, that strips down several key features of its predecessor, Nautilus. The reaction from the community has been quite negative, with less than one fifth approving this move (http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/07/is-the-new-nautilus-a-step-in-the-direction-poll). I think this will eventually force Canonical to adopt an alternative file manager. Though in a previous thread (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2035315) several folk showed to disagree, Canonical has proved in the past unwilling to be constrained by third party decisions.

So here I intend to get a feeling on where the community would like to see Canonical going if (when?) it decides to replace Files. The list is based on the feedback got in the previous discussion (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2035315).

P.S.: Please don't tell me to move to KDE, this is a discussion about Ubuntu, not Kubuntu.

[Paqman]

Bit hard to say without actually trying it. When are they aiming to release this, and where/when can we give a test run?

[Jakin]

Marlin, but Dolphin is a close second.
Marlin appearance is abit screwy looking with my KDE, but still.

[lads]

Bit hard to say without actually trying it. When are they aiming to release this, and where/when can we give a test run?

Here's what they say in the Alpha 1 release notes (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QuantalQuetzal/TechnicalOverview/Alpha1):


The remainder of GNOME 3.4 is now in the Ubuntu archives including Disks, Evolution, Seahorse/GNOME Keyring, and Totem. Some parts of GNOME 3.5.1/3.5.2 have already arrived with more to follow as we target GNOME 3.6 for Ubuntu 12.10.

Files is part of GNome 3.6, but in 12.10 Alpha 3 it is yet GNome 3.5, which still includes good old Nautilus. I hope they can include it in a Beta release.

[Copper Bezel]

lads, Nautilus was renamed to Files in Gnome 3.0. If search for it in Shell, you'll see that it comes up as such in the Dash. But it's no more "renamed" than gedit (which displays as Text Editor and has since Gnome 2) or Totem (Movie Player) is. It's just named that in the dash to avoid confusion.

Nautilus was also massively simplified in the same transition to 3.0. The 3.0 UI is at least as distinct from Nautilus 2.x than 3.6 is from 3.0 (more, really.) I really would have panicked about the future of Nautilus back then, rather than now.

I'd need to see a convincing case for what Unity needs out of a file manager to vote fairly. I mean, Ubuntu is still a Gnome system. All of the default applications that aren't Unity or Firefox are Gnome. So I don't know why the FM is special, and I don't know what this latest minor update changes that will affect Unity users but not Gnome Shell users. Again, if anything, Unity allows users to simply depend on the FM less than in Gnome, because of documents in the Dash search and, to a much more minor extent, because it uses desktop icons by default.

I use Marlin under Gnome, and I'm extremely happy with it - all it's missing is a search feature.* But I don't see any convincing case for the idea that Marlin offers something that the new Nautilus removes. If the new Nautilus is unusable for you, Marlin probably will be, too.

I'll admit that the loss of Bookmarks is nonsense and would be my last-straw feature if I were using Nautilus in the first place. They were crippled in 3.0 and now they're going away entirely, because apparently the existing shortcuts should be enough. I don't know about y'all, but I don't live my life in categories like Pictures, Downloads, and Documents. It's nonsense that I couldn't even add my Dropbox to that list, and that's reason enough to stick with Marlin.

I'll also admit that it's been nice to see Marlin gain features as I've upgraded, as opposed to losing them.

But still.

* Personally, I'd like a search feature, and I'd like the works - an indexed, search-as-you-type one that searches recursively from the current location - but that's not really on offer. (Dolphin comes very, very close, and I wish it wasn't my least-favorite file manager otherwise.)

[Primefalcon]

Personally sine they are integrating qt anyhow..... why not bundle dolphin instead... it is a far better file manager... and I love the integrated terminal feature!

nautilus should of been dumped before tbh

[lads]

If the new Nautilus is unusable for you, Marlin probably will be, too.

A file manager without a tree view is not a file manager to me. If Marlin in particular doesn't have a tree view plenty of others do. The famous F3 is also a big loss, though I can also manage with tabs.


I'll admit that the loss of Bookmarks is nonsense and would be my last-straw feature if I were using Nautilus in the first place.

So you first disagree but now agree. Yes, Bookmarks are quite important, especially when you have to connect to a large number of remote hard drives and servers. This is an indispensable feature in a file manager, whose strip out I can't possibly understand.

If Nautilus isn't your file manager of choice I can understand the changes being introduced don't bother you much...

[Kreaninw]

I think the devs care about simplicity, which is good for them to know that all users is not geek. But still, remove my bookmark feature is far too much, without bookmark it's useless. Search and bookmark is a must in any file manager IMO.

May be, they could try to think about simplicity by improve the UI and how the task is done, instead of cutting some features out to make it more useless. Priority is the key in this situation, where more important feature can be access easily, while super thing will hide itself some more to meet geeks preference.

[Primefalcon]

fine hide the features but allows users to go into settings to re-enable it please....!

[MadmanRB]

Maybe another nautilus fork is needed as Marlin is very unstable.
PCmanFM lacks video thumbnail support, and Thunar is bundled down with XFCE dependencies.

[Simian Man]

Dolphin is file managing perfection. It has tons of features while being snappy and slick looking. I doubt that Ubuntu would include a KDE app by default, but it really is the best of the bunch. It's a good time to be a KDE user :).

[MadmanRB]

The problem lays in dependencies though, it would be better if KDE was better supported in Ubuntu too but Canonical axed Kubuntu and practically left KDE in the cold.

[Simian Man]

The problem lays in dependencies though, it would be better if KDE was better supported in Ubuntu too but Canonical axed Kubuntu and practically left KDE in the cold.

I said they likely wouldn't make Dolphin default, I'm just saying it's the best. And even without official support, KDE still is way more functional and polished in general than Gnome/Unity/Whatever.

[cmcanulty]

why are we lately losing feature in gnome and nautilus? Stop fixing things that aren't broke

[alphacrucis2]

why are we lately losing feature in gnome and nautilus? Stop fixing things that aren't broke

One of the gnome founders Federico Mena-Quintero has accused the current bunch of gnome devs of "vandalism"

[Frogs Hair]

I like Marlin, but at the moment doesn't even have a copy to desktop or home function in the context menu which I would miss . Marlin has already been forked into Pantheon for the Elementary OS and there have been features added but I have not tried it yet.

[nothingspecial]

Devs like people moaning.

If no-one were bashing the latest developments things would go stale quick.

[Copper Bezel]

Agreed.


A file manager without a tree view is not a file manager to me. If Marlin in particular doesn't have a tree view plenty of others do. The famous F3 is also a big loss, though I can also manage with tabs.



So you first disagree but now agree. Yes, Bookmarks are quite important, especially when you have to connect to a large number of remote hard drives and servers. This is an indispensable feature in a file manager, whose strip out I can't possibly understand.
Yeah, that sounds like a contradiction, but here's what I mean: I don't give a rat's embryonic gill slits about tree view, and you weren't up in arms about bookmarks yourself until I mentioned them. Admittedly, Marlin has both. But there are a lot of features it doesn't have, too, like the split two-pane view. You and I are very picky about file managers, and I said that I'd probably stop using Nautilus at this point if I hadn't already, sure; but I don't think the majority of users are going to miss the missing features, and I know we won't all be missing the same features.

At the same time, I'm using Marlin despite its inexcusable lack of a search feature. Could I imagine myself using Nautilus, which has the search but not bookmarks, given some time to get used to it? Sure. I'm just not likely to do that because I'm already rather attached to Marlin.

[lads]

fine hide the features but allows users to go into settings to re-enable it please....!

To me, that would seem the sensible approach.

[vexorian]

What is sad is that there has always been a vital problem with DEs, that their apps have way too heavy dependencies and there is an awful lack of modularity. Dolphin should only need QT, Marlin should only need GTK. That you need the whole KDE to run Dolphin shows really how badly designed the core of our DEs is.

It is worse with Unity, being a Compiz plugin. Compiz is like the worst possible kind of dependency any app could have. It is not a surpise there is so little Unity adoption outside the Ubuntu world. They should have instead made Unity2D able to use 3D and replace the Compiz plugin


Maybe another nautilus fork is needed as Marlin is very unstable.
PCmanFM lacks video thumbnail support, and Thunar is bundled down with XFCE dependencies.
If the main problem with marlin is that it is unstable, then what is needed is to fix its unstability. Or re-do the fork it with better care about stability and keep calling it Marlin.

[Simian Man]

The overarching issue here is the philosophy of Gnome of making the software as simple as possible. KDE has been panned for having too many options and features, but look at how Gnome fans react when Gnome removes something that they actually use. To use Gnome nowadays you have to have nearly the same idea of how things should operate as the developers. All the backlash should cement that this is the wrong way to go about designing software. The KDE model is to make the software featureful and flexible while providing sane defaults.


What is sad is that there has always been a vital problem with DEs, that their apps have way too heavy dependencies and there is an awful lack of modularity. Dolphin should only need QT, Marlin should only need GTK. That you need the whole KDE to run Dolphin shows really how badly designed the core of our DEs is.

This is not true at all, in fact it's a sign of good design. If Dolphin did not make use of KDE libraries, it would need to have a whole bunch of extra code in it for things that KDE already does such as network access, a terminal emulator, file searching, extra widgets not in QT and probably more stuff behind the scenes. Putting the code for these things in each project directly is a horrible idea for security, maintainability, and flexibility.

[BrokenKingpin]

I stick with Thunar in Xubuntu. Simple and fast, and more features than you would expect.

[vexorian]

The overarching issue here is the philosophy of Gnome of making the software as simple as possible. KDE has been panned for having too many options and features, but look at how Gnome fans react when Gnome removes something that they actually use. To use Gnome nowadays you have to have nearly the same idea of how things should operate as the developers. All the backlash should cement that this is the wrong way to go about designing software. The KDE model is to make the software featureful and flexible while providing sane defaults.



This is not true at all, in fact it's a sign of good design. If Dolphin did not make use of KDE libraries, it would need to have a whole bunch of extra code in it for things that KDE already does such as network access, a terminal emulator, file searching, extra widgets not in QT and probably more stuff behind the scenes. Putting the code for these things in each project directly is a horrible idea for security, maintainability, and flexibility.
One learns it is terrible design the second you become aware that somehow you started to believe that "dependency" and code reuse are the same thing.

A better way to implement the integration dolphin has with other tools is through addons/extensions* that can easily be removed or added to dolphin or whatever app. If our tools were more modular like that, everything would be easier to replace with and to. I need a whole DE I don't really want to use just to be able to run K3B and Amarok. I don't think that's fine...

*Edit: and standards and conventions so that the same api could work well in different DEs.

[Simian Man]

One learns it is terrible design the second you become aware that somehow you started to believe that "dependency" and code reuse are the same thing.

A better way to implement the integration dolphin has with other tools is through addons/extensions* that can easily be removed or added to dolphin or whatever app. If our tools were more modular like that, everything would be easier to replace with and to. I need a whole DE I don't really want to use just to be able to run K3B and Amarok. I don't think that's fine...

So you think that applications should be written to allow you to substitute libraries that do the exact same thing so that you can save a few megabytes of hard drive space? That's a lot of work for a very silly goal. What does it really matter if you have to install a few libraries to get a great application?

[Primefalcon]

I dont care if I have th whole de installed or not since I have 10 installed anyhow.....

Dolphin is still by go-to file manager and I use Unity

tbh removing the split view from nautilus as well as now taking out the option for location view is ridiculous... Nautilus frankly went from being an ok file manager (read not great) to something that feels Alpha (features still nowhere near complete of a proper file manager)

[drawkcab]

FWIW, the Mint crew has forked Nautilus to create Nemo.


Nautilus 3.5.x, which will become Nautilus 3.6 stable and will be a part of GNOME 3.6, has got a new toolbar and menubar, but there were also some features that were removed, like the dual pane feature, sidebar tree view and others. And this, it seems, wasn't what the Linux Mint developers want for their users, so they've decided to fork Nautilus 3.4.x, which still has these features.

http://www.webupd8.org/2012/08/nemo-linux-mint-team-forks-nautilus.html

[vexorian]

This is starting to look like a bad case of balkanization.

The good thing is that when all of this is over, the one setup to reclaim most of GNOME's old market share will be very competitive as it would have had to compete with all the forks, shells , variations, stuff, etc.

[BigSilly]

When Gnome 3 and Shell came out, I really took to it quickly. I thought it was pretty marvellous, and that it was surely only a matter of time before it caught on. But the more I see these sorts of changes, the removal of useful, important, and widely used functionality, the more confused I am by it all. And now here we are with another fork. What on earth is happening to Gnome?

[vexorian]

When Gnome 3 and Shell came out, I really took to it quickly. I thought it was pretty marvellous, and that it was surely only a matter of time before it caught on. But the more I see these sorts of changes, the removal of useful, important, and widely used functionality, the more confused I am by it all. And now here we are with another fork. What on earth is happening to Gnome?
The word you are looking for is "imploding".

[Copper Bezel]

It's deliberate, though. I mean, there are features that are being removed that were introduced in earlier versions of Gnome 3 (like documents in the Dash search.) Some applications are being re-written to match an even more minimalist ideal, and all signs point to that being the goal for the system. (Web (née Epiphany) seems like a mobile browser without any actual mobile browser features.)

It's not an implosion as a result of infighting or something. It's a unified effort on the part of the Gnome devs to push the DE in a direction that the majority of users (and many outside developers, apparently) seem unimpressed by.

[BigCityCat]

When Gnome 3 and Shell came out, I really took to it quickly. I thought it was pretty marvellous, and that it was surely only a matter of time before it caught on. But the more I see these sorts of changes, the removal of useful, important, and widely used functionality, the more confused I am by it all. And now here we are with another fork. What on earth is happening to Gnome?

It's pretty simple really. Gnome is aiming towards touchscreen devices. Tablets, cell phones netbooks. They are leaving the desktop and laptop power user behind. The funny thing is 95% of their user base are power users. Better start looking for a new DE people. Honestly how could it not be interpreted any different. Take all the useful aspects of a file manager out and simplify it to finding your videos and pictures with your fingers.

I have moved to KDE. You can use it without all the shiny stuff. It is a very solid desktop. Kwin does almost everything Compiz did and better.

[Copper Bezel]

Yes, but that doesn't explain everything. A lot of the new features are touchscreen-oriented, and that's not unreasonable - if the MS Surface Pro is the kind of form factor we have to look forward to installing Linux on, then Shell's level of touch-friendliness is really to be expected. What doesn't jive is equating touchiness or even simplicity to a dumbed-down feature set.

I mean, type-to-filter (a good thing, IMO) and the removal of bookmarks and the templates (inexplicable) are neutral to the pointing device used. The removals of tree view, compact view, and the menu do remove features that wouldn't play well on touchscreens, but the presence of the option of using tree or compact view doesn't, by itself, hamper use on a touchscreen. (Removal of menubars is arguably not about touchscreens, either, as it's also an increasingly common aesthetic choice. Elementary was doing it long before Gnome was. And the trend sort of kicked off with Chrome and Firefox.)

Damn, I just realized that in the simplified 3.4 Overview search, which no longer includes Recent Documents, the only locations that appear are bookmarked ones. If Nautilus loses bookmarks, then the overview will presumably lose that capability, too. Gnome is officially removing features as quickly as I can discover them. = /

[viperdvman]

As far as Dolphin goes, I use it when I'm running KDE in Ubuntu. However, I use Nautilus when running Unity or GNOME Shell.

However, Linux Mint just came out with Nemo, a Nautilus 3.4.x fork. So why not go with it? :)

[philinux]

However, Linux Mint just came out with Nemo, a Nautilus 3.4.x fork. So why not go with it? :)

Indeed and it looks promising.

http://www.webupd8.org/2012/08/nemo-...-nautilus.html

[BigCityCat]

Not sure if this is posted already but this is the direction they are going.

http://worldofgnome.org/the-futuristic-design-of-all-gnome-apps/

[vexorian]

(Nemo news bit)
the location entry is visible by default, but it doesn't replace the breadcrumbs - it's displayed under the breadcrumb, and the user can easily show/hide it from the View menu or by using the CTRL + L keyboard shortcut. Nemo already looks grand.

[neu5eeCh]

The word you are looking for is "imploding".

To implode or to gnome:

1. burst inward

The bottle imploded.

2. To act without regard to external, reality-based input. Behavior charactered by self-delusion and, specifically, delusions of grandeur.

The bottle gnomed.

[mc4man]

As usual a lot of mis-imformation
Bookmarks has not been removed
Templates has not been removed
Places now has a Recent (files
Location has not been removed

[vexorian]

Source of the claims : http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/07/is-the-new-nautilus-a-step-in-the-direction-poll. Each claim links to a page that explains how the change was actually committed to nautilus. So, if it is misinformation, it is coming from GNOME's own tracker. Worse, the links lead you to the gnome developers' rationale behind these ideas. And everyone is a little worse than the other. It seems that they are removing anything that gnome-shell can supposedly do instead of nautilus - making it so nautilus is only useful as a complement to gnome-shell. So all those other DEs, including unity that happened to be using nautilus should probably switch to something else.

*It says the bookmarks menu will be removed. Does not say bookmarks as a whole are gone.

I'd say most people are worrying more about the split screen, the type ahead find and the tree vie rather than those things...

[Copper Bezel]

Type-ahead and filter are exactly the same feature, except that one is slightly more useful. This is a replacement or enhancement, not a removal. Results typing a particular string into a particular folder will be different, but the workflow is effectively unchanged.

"Tree" view is actually called "list" view right now in 3.4x. This is obviously not the first time this discussion has been had.

What are you seeing regarding Gnome features as a rationale for removing Nautilus features? I see the reference in the split-pane feature discussion, but the comment makes it clear that Gnome's tiling isn't the only reason and that it's really about tabs. (For that matter, Files is going to be one of the new full-screen friendly apps, so it really has to work without the tiling, and most everything but Openbox can tile that way anyway.) Are there other features where redundancy with Shell features is cited specifically?

I don't see how the Shell can take over location bookmarks. The bookmarks still have to be set somewhere, and that can't happen inside the Overview.

[mc4man]

*It says the bookmarks menu will be removed. Does not say bookmarks as a whole are gone.

I'd say most people are worrying more about the split screen, the type ahead find and the tree vie rather than those things...
Sorry - then I misunderstood what some where complaining about there.
Correct - atm the is no Bookmarks dropdown so people using naut without a sidebar are for the most part sol.
(the Bookmarks edit menu can be used to navigate to Bookmarked locations but that's not a replacement of any real sort.

Most users could care less about dual pane, the typeahead was useful, as was tree though again for a limited user group.

Obviously Ubuntu will have to decide whether to accept gnome3 as is or do something else, there was some mention of providing 3.4 as an alt. in 12.10, don't know what the chances are there.

[Copper Bezel]

Oh. Thank you for quoting that, such that I actually read it this time. = / Sorry about that. Yes, the bookmarks menu going away would be a natural consequence of the menubar going away, wouldn't it? So Nautilus is still even with Marlin and the sky is not falling, not even a little bit.

[lads]

Most users could care less about dual pane, the typeahead was useful, as was tree though again for a limited user group.

Here is a good piece of misinformation. On what usage study have you based these claims? Here in the office everyone uses at least one of those features, the tree view especially seems very helpful for beginners.

And another question for you: how many bookmarks can you manage if you only have the side pane?

[lads]

Is this a file manager to you?

http://worldofgnome.org/uploads/2012/07/file-selection-home-700x525.png (http://worldofgnome.org/the-futuristic-design-of-all-gnome-apps/)

Certainly not to me.

[Primefalcon]

Is this a file manager to you?

http://worldofgnome.org/uploads/2012/07/file-selection-home-700x525.png (http://worldofgnome.org/the-futuristic-design-of-all-gnome-apps/)

Certainly not to me.
damn, thats the new nautilus, I've read about all he features removed.... didn't realize that petty much everything was gone though....

honestly the split screen and bookmarks being removed were a kill point for me.... I am using dolphin now, its always been my preferred file manager anyhow... more features and snappier... you'd think something as feature lacking as nautilus would be fast..... but its not.....

[Ravi5kumar]

A fork is the best option! Gnome 3 developers removed so many features](*,)!
They first made Gnome DE a mess (Gnome 2 was best) and now they are messing with all the apps they created for it! I think they don't like their users and don't want to hear from them.....

[Copper Bezel]

damn, thats the new nautilus, I've read about all he features removed.... didn't realize that petty much everything was gone though....

That's not Nautilus 3.6, and it's not the normal view, anyway. It's a mockup of a future version acting as a file chooser for another app. The screenshot for 3.6 is in the link in the first post.

What is with Gnome's dedication to hideous icons, though? =/

[vexorian]

^ It is the one gnome 2 "feature" they are not willing to get rid of never ever.

[Ben Jao Ming]

Where's the option for sticking with Files? I mean, why should Ubuntu change the default file manager if the default one is an integrated part of Gnome? And since you haven't tried it, what's the background for your decisions? Certainly, the screenshot above has had the sidebar disabled and is running an icon theme that most Ubuntu users would hate -- it's hardly an informed decision you are asking people to make, OP.

[madjr]

Where's the option for sticking with Files? I mean, why should Ubuntu change the default file manager if the default one is an integrated part of Gnome? And since you haven't tried it, what's the background for your decisions? Certainly, the screenshot above has had the sidebar disabled and is running an icon theme that most Ubuntu users would hate -- it's hardly an informed decision you are asking people to make, OP.

I agree.

maybe moving on to an alternative is better left for 13.04, so why the rush to jump to other uncertain solutions?

[lads]

I'd like to thank everyone that bothered to take the poll and post their thoughts here.

The list of features removed by Nautilus is growing day by day and is now even putting at check features that are part of Unity itself that rely on Nautilus. Although some folk here have expressed their desire to see Files (Nautilus 3.6) on 12.10, that now seems unlikely to happen (http://www.webupd8.org/2012/08/ubuntu-1210-might-ship-with-nautilus-34.html).

The results of this poll show that 1/3 of the voters would prefer a fork of Nautilus. Indeed this seems the option more favoured by the Ubuntu devs, and logically the one that requires less effort from their side.

Of note also the high voting on Dolphin, which means this must be a good piece of software, worth checking out. Including Dolphin on 12.10 is not at all realistic at this stage, but even for later releases, it would require much more effort than simply adopting a Nautilus fork like Nemo, or even Marlin. If Dolphin ever comes to be integrated with Unity, the effort will likely have to come from the Dolphin developers.

Let's wait and see what comes out in the first Alpha release.