if it ain't broke, don't fix it! -or- nautilus after the upgrade

[rebeltaz]

This is why I hate upgrading software. Designers invariably thing that "different" is "better"!

I upgraded to 14.04LTS last night and, while most things seem to be ok, nautilus is completely different. Instead of an application menu bar [File|Edit|View|etc] I am stuck with an all-in-one "global menu(?)". I can no only choose from 'icon' view or 'list' view - I can't select 'details' view (I think that was what it was called) where I could scroll left to right instead of up and down.

Is there no way to get back the features of the original nautilus?

I know everything is being geared towards tablets and "smart" phones now, but to design a mouse/keyboard desktop environment in the same manner just doesn't make sense.

[grahammechanical]

What did you upgrade from? The global menu has been in Ubuntu for years. I am not sure if it is possible to do this with 14.04 but in recent versions there is an option in System Settings>Appearance>Behavior tab>Show the menus for a window>In the window's title bar.

The global menu is part of the Unity user interface. But you will need to get use to change because over the last few years the Gnome.org developers have been busy making changes to Nautilus & Gedit & other things.

The Nautilus in 16.04 does not show its menus in the global menu. They are under 2 buttons in the window's title bar & the icons for files & folders are large. There is a slider that can change the Icon size. It goes from large to very large.

And all this is nothing to do with Ubuntu developers.

[rebeltaz]

I upgraded from 12.04.I did check that box under settings, but it has no effect on nautilus. Is there maybe another file browser/manager that looks/acts like nautilus used to? Or am I stuck with having to get used to a developers whims? Thanks for the reply...

[deadflowr]

I upgraded from 12.04.I did check that box under settings, but it has no effect on nautilus. Is there maybe another file browser/manager that looks/acts like nautilus used to? Or am I stuck with having to get used to a developers whims? Thanks for the reply...

Finding Nemo (http://www.webupd8.org/2013/10/install-nemo-with-unity-patches-and.html) ;)

[rebeltaz]

I am looking at dolphin right now but I will try nemo. It looks like nautilus used to! Thank you.

I just wanted to say thank you to you all. I did go with nemo as the deafult and I left dolphin installed as well. I probably won't use it, but it is nice too. thundar didn't let me select different "view as..." types for each folder and pcmanfm... well, I don't remember why I didn't like that one! lol

[Geoffrey_Arndt]

I'm running Ubuntu 14.04 and 15.10. Nautilus still has all the old menus on my systems. I can change the views and everything. Did you move your cursor to the very top panel of the screen, and then, didn't the normal "File. . Edit . . View . . Go . . Bookmarks . . Help . . . , , , options not show up? Be careful with Nemo . . . you can get instability in Unity after it's installed as the default file browser.

[rebeltaz]

I did move my moue to the very top bar - as shown in the attached photo - and nothing. I MIGHT could have lived with that. That I couldn't find a "Compact List" view ... I think I misnamed it in the original post. Going on the info on the page posted by @deadflowr, without the Cinnamon components, nemo should be ok. If not... well, I didn't uninstall nautilus and I do still have dolphin installed as a backup. If it does cause issues, I'll post back so others know. Thanks :)

[buzzingrobot]

Nautilus is a product of the Gnome project that Canonical modifies/tweaks/cajoles for its purposes. It's not hard to find complaints that Gnome has oversimplified Nautilus and included changes some users think are annoying and arbitrary. Others think it's just fine.

I may be wrong, but isn't Unity 8 going to use an in-house file manager?

[Geoffrey_Arndt]

rebeltaz, . . . on my system (and all others in our PC club) . . . the nautilus file manager program does have the menus it's had for several versions now.

File, Edit, etc. The functionality is still there (for example, ctrl+1 and ctrl+2 still allow for switching of views from list to icon). Since your thumbnail is of the "active" window of Nautilus, . . . . if you move your cursor to the top panel of the "desktop" window (in other words, resize your nautilus window(s), and then move cursor to the top of the underlying desktop screen.

When you do that, you don't see the various file options? IF not, it is likely your nautilus program is broken or something changed the normal preferences . . . . ??
Meanwhile, here's a thumbnail (200k) of my nautilus with all the file options visible.

http://i.imgur.com/bumXPn9h.png

[rebeltaz]

rebeltaz, . . . on my system (and all others in our PC club) . . . the nautilus file manager program does have the menus it's had for several versions now.

File, Edit, etc. The functionality is still there (for example, ctrl+1 and ctrl+2 still allow for switching of views from list to icon). Since your thumbnail is of the "active" window of Nautilus, . . . . if you move your cursor to the top panel of the "desktop" window (in other words, resize your nautilus window(s), and then move cursor to the top of the underlying desktop screen.

When you do that, you don't see the various file options? IF not, it is likely your nautilus program is broken or something changed the normal preferences . . . . ??
Meanwhile, here's a thumbnail (200k) of my nautilus with all the file options visible.


I think I may know why yours is different from mine. I have Gnome Classic installed/set so that may be interfering with the menus.