[plug] File browser

[Adam Davin]

G'day Craig,

On Fri, 09 Jun 2006 20:25:56 +0800
Craig Dyke <grail at westnet.com.au> wrote:

> I was curious to ask what file / system browser people are using?
> 
> I recently installed Nautilus but I use Fluxbox and found that
> launching Nautilus caused
> gnome to sit on top of Fluxbox. While Nautilus seems very efficient
> and has nice features,
> it means I lose my Fluxbox background and all the icons sitting on
> it. I also lose my
> Fluxbox menu which leaves me having to go out to a shell and kill 
> Nautilus to get back
> to my normal desktop.

Can't help with nautilus I'm afraid as I don't use it.. 
 
> So while my first question still remains, if anyone knows how to get 
> around above situation
> I would also appreciate that information?

Up until very recently (and I still do quite a bit) I used Midnight
Commander in a terminal prompt. Unfortunately this does not support
drag and drop and the like, but it was very similar to Norton
Commander, which made it an easy adaption. It also allowed me to open
things in X with the appropriate extension commands (ie what to do with
a certain type of file.)

I went looking for a more advanced "X" version of MC and came across
xnc (X northern captain). This did support drag and drop and the
familiar command line down the bottom. The main issue I had with this
was when I followed a symlink, it transferred me to the actual
location, it didn't keep the symlink. Eg if I have a
directory /home/badger/~files which points to /mnt/store/files, if,
from /home/badger I change to files, I find when I go back a level, I
ended up in /mnt/store (I hope this makes sense!). It had a command
line, which was great, but this didn't support bash shell expansions,
so I went looking for something else. 

Currently I am using xffm the XFCE4 (XFCE4 is my WM) file manager. This
has a two pane interface with both panes independant (a bit like MC) I
can either have a tree view by expanding the directory, or I can double
click on the directory to change the "root" of the pane. It supports
"drag and drop" and "open with" as well as multiple open with commands.
It's still not quite what I am after as it does not have a command
line. But wait.. Just tried a "open with" on a directory and specified
my terminal (xfterm4) and it opens the directory as a terminal! :) Well
that is that problem taken care of, I'm happy.

Sometimes it is nice to be able to change to a directory directly
without having to navigate through a tree, having a commandline that
you can cd /to/whereever/you/want/to/go from anywhere else, is often
much quicker (No, I haven't submitted a request to the XFCE people :)

Hope this helps,

Regards, 

-- 

Adam Davin
Byteme IT Services
Mob: 0422 893 898
Fax: 08 9493 4462
Email: byteme-its at westnet.com.au