Filemanagers for the GNU/Linux or *BSD desktop!

GNU/Linux is all about choices! There are plenty of everything that we could install, ranging from several audio players to several 100(!) window managers.

Yet, as of now, we are still stuck with the file and folder (or directory) hierarchy paradigm for managing all information on these platforms (GNU/Linux/*BSD); therefore to manage these files and folders, we need a file manager. Yes of course, die-hard UNIX geeks might live with the good old shell prompt (ksh/bash/tcsh) with the coreutils relevant commands, but do they ? Not me atleast.

During the MS-DOS days that I started my computing career on, I was overly fascinated by the power(!) of Norton Commander
with the combination of JPSoft's 4DOS shell for doing all my Quick'n'Dirty work. Infact, I used to set Norton Commander as my default shell (later to be replaced by a leaner, more powerful clone called "Volkov's Commander" by some Russian programming wizard). It was not too late until Norton Commander became my comfy-crutch - I just couldn't stand DOS without it.

And then, when I began my early exploration on GNU/Linux, I spent a couple of months griping about the lack of a similar file manager, until I found the now infamous (for the command-line geeks) GNU Midnight Commander - a masterpiece authored by none other than Miguel De Icaza himself (with a dozen of other familiar hackers). Midnight Commander came as a blessing for people like me who couldn't live without Norton Commander. After a couple of months on the GNU Midnight Commander, I began to frown upon Norton Commander as a retarded tool for its lack of powerful features and performance like Midnight Commander - which is a clone alright, but a clone done right.

Back in those days, GUI file managers on GNU/Linux platform was a joke. Most of them were shady looking or rather shabbily-clad hacks without focus on usability and being quickly coded using toolkits like Tk.

But now that the time has come for GNU/Linux to reach the desktop users, there are excellent tools and applications for the desktop. This includes some good file managers too. The following are a few of them that I got my hands on:

Evidence
The enlightened file manager. Though in its initial development stage and still not largely usable/stable, it holds great promises for the future as it is being built using the enlightenment's framework (EFL). I've been using this one for sometime now and it looks to be the most sexiest of all file managers I've seen so far, with clean interface, nice usability features (no cluttered toolbars/menubars). It goes well with the beautiful enlightenment window manager.
Update: It seems that this project has collapsed or has become dormant. Let's hope that something better turns up for Enlightenment 17.

ROX-Filer
The most powerful file manager for the Linux desktop that I've used so far. There's a steep learning curve involved to unleash its power, but once you get used to it, you'll no longer want any other file manager. It supports drag'n'drop and excellent keyboard navigation/support as well. If you intend to use a GUI file manager without moving your hands to the mouse, then this is the right pick. Of course, you'll need to spend sometime configuring it to suit your taste (setting short-cuts for all your most-used features, for instance). Though, this project focuses on creating a desktop environment, all that I found good so far from it was the file manager itself. This file manager depends on GTK, Python and a couple of other Gnome relevant libraries.

X File Explorer
This is the file manager for those who are accustomed to Windows Explorer's interface. It uses the FOX toolkit for its UI. It looks and somewhat behaves like the Windows Explorer. It is well suited for making up a desktop environment that resembles Windows. I've been using this file manager along with Qvwm window manager to make up a lean desktop environment for my old machines that I use for my training sessions.

GWorkspace.app
Though officially termed as the workspace manager for the GNUstep platform, I still consider it as a file manager. It is based on Workspace.app of the NeXT! platform and is highly usable (for those who love NeXT/GNUstep). It is best used with WindowMaker or AfterStep environments.

Gentoo File manager
Not to be confused with the Gentoo GNU/Linux project, this file manager is somewhat inspired by the DirectoryOpus file manager on Amiga platforms. Though not polished-looking according current UI/look'n'feel standards, it is still considered to be powerful enough and user-friendly for those that come from the Amiga platform.

X File manager
One of the file managers that I had considered as a joke years back in terms of UI/look'n'feel. This file manager might appeal to users who've used CDE (which in my opinion is equally bad-looking and feature-handicapped).

Nautilus File manager
Nothing much to be said, as most GNU/Linux users would've experienced this already. This is the official file manager of the GNOME desktop environment. This is supposed to be powerful(?), heavily bloated and resource-hungry application. Dont even bother using this file manager on a machine with less than 256 MB RAM and/or processor running below 1.3 GHz clock speed. There are some nifty features in this file manager, yet it fails to impress me due to its bloat-factor and its unresponsiveness (on my machine with AMD AthlonXP 1800+ with 512MB RAM and ASUS A7V400MX motherboard). And yes, it crashes quite often. I somehow miss the nautilus 1.4 which used to look more better with justified for the bloat. The recent versions of it are getting rid of features, yet they seem more bloated than their predecessor releases. If you've used Ubuntu Linux, or Redhat/Fedora core, and complain that GNU/Linux is too slow/unstable, blame none other than this file manager along with its bloatware-cousin - GNOME itself.

XFCE's File Manager
Yet another badly-designed file manager, IMO. I would seriously recommend X File Explorer as your default file manager for the XFCE desktop, instead of this one. The hype that this file manager is light-weight is a myth! It gobbles up 10 MB of RAM for each instance, which doesn't justify its "simplicity". The UI/look'n'feel is unconventional and overly confusing. It seems that its developers need to learn from X File Explorer, ROX-Filer or even Nautilus.

Konqueror file manager
This is the official file manager for the KDE environment (and almost every GNU/Linux user knows it). But what makes it special is its integration with the KDE desktop. If you've used Mandrake Linux, Knoppix (and its cousins), SuSE Linux, and many other desktop linux distributions, you've most likely used Konqueror. Its not just a file manager, but a complete web browser too. More broadly termed, its a universal viewer (to view webpages, files and folders, images, PDF documents and so on). It uses component re-usability to its limits to provide endless possibilities of integration. It is bloated alright, but for a good reason! I've had it working on my laptop (Pentium 133 MMX with 32 MB RAM), and it didn't crash/misbehave like Nautilus. It was slow, but stable and still usable. I would highly recomment this file manager for GNU/Linux newbies, along with its family - the K Desktop Environment.

GNU Midnight Commander
My favourite file manager. Though it is a console file manager, I still use it from within a full screen rxvt-unicode. Its the fastest, most stable and most usable file manager I've ever tried. My opinions might be overly biased on this one, as this is my most widely used app on Linux (file management, editing, so on). The only file manager that comes close to the power of this file manager (for a keyboard-junkie) is the ROX-Filer.

GNU Midnight Commander 4.1.X-MP
This is a patched version of the older midnight commander (4.1 series). But it sports some neat features, performance and is leaner when compared to 4.6.x series of the official Midnight Commander. It did crash a couple of times during file copy/view operations, but perhaps it might be due to my overly tinkered compiler flags.

Krusader File Manager
This is the GUI clone of the Midnight Commander for the KDE desktop. It sports all of the features of the infamous console file manager, and offers lots more features that are made available as the part of KDE's reusable components (like support for various archive formats and KIOSlaves). It feels a little slow and might not be as appealing as the Konqueror or the console based Midnight Commander, but someone might just like it.

There are many more file managers worth exploring, and I'll update as and when I find something impressive.

Update

Thunar File Manager
A better alternative to the old XFCE's file manager. This file manager is based on GTK2 and is lighter when compared to nautilus or konqueror. The look'n'feel is somewhat similar to nautilus, but its focused to be purely a file manager with minimal dependencies - it does not have extraneous features like desktop icon/background wallpaper management and GNOME-specific dependencies. It is the best recommended file manager for XFCE desktop as of now.

PCMan File Manager
PCMan File Manager is yet another GTK2 based file manager that mimics Thunar file manager in terms of look'n'feel and functionality. What makes it a lot different is the support for tabbed browsing (like in the mozilla firefox browser). Instead of opening a directory in a new window, you can open them within the same window under a new tab. Think of it as flexibility/usability of firefox web browser (in managing multiple windows) into a file manager. It seems to be in active development right now and I've faced occasional crashes while trying to launch files using applications like xpdf. But I hope these minor issues are being ironed out as of now.