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[–] Lucretius 0 points 1 point (+1|-0) ago 

So you asked about what I want in a file manager…

So, there are a lot of things that I want in a file manager, and to some degree this is a function of individual tasks that I use it for. I keep several different file managers around for specific tasks in addition to general purpose managers.

General purpose:

  • The most important feature that really matters is a reconfigurable and customizable interface. Generally, I like to start with a dual pane set up... that means both a directory tree and contents window for each pane like this, not just two contents windows like this. But the key thing is not a specific interface, but rather an interface that is customizable and, at a minimum, supports dual pane. The closest I've found to this in Linux-world is 4pane unfortunately it has consistently not installed stably on LinuxMint for me... although to be fair, I haven't seriously tried recently since updating to 19.1.

    • Customization should also extend not just to layout but to everything about how the program presents itself and data... control of fonts, appearance of buttons, optional grid for file-lists, control of file name colors by rules, etc.
    • Contents panes, integrated text editors/viewer, hex editor/viewer, integrated FTP/SFTP/SCP clients that treat the remote site as a directory, integrated terminal/command-line interfaces... these sorts of things are nice, but only insofar as their presence is subordinated to the whole interface is customizable principle.
    • Similarly, tabbed file management is cute, but not substitute for configuration of the primary work-space.
    • Support for tags is cute, but shouldn't replace the centrality of the directory file system structure of organizing files.
    • A really good file manager has many of the features of a minimalist IDE centered around directories instead of project spaces.
  • Of course bare minimum basic features like click-name-to-rename, recognize and mount all file systems seamlessly, file-meta-data-editing, treat ALL archive formats seamlessly as directories, batch renaming, folder sync and advanced batch copy-move with rule-based file collision resolving, no need to mess with installing codecs separately from the main app, etc... it should go without saying that every graphical file manager should have all that, but unfortunately it does actually have to be said.

  • Built-in disk and volume management utilities:

    • format, and repair file systems.
    • Edit and view multiple partitions.
    • secure delete and over-write meeting DoD and NSA standards.
  • This rubs the Linux developer the wrong way... but I'm used to doing all file management operations with the assumption of full administrator privileges. Back when I was in windows world, I would go to some effort to completely disable things like UAC that were meant to protect me from myself. Since, a graphical file manager is seen as a sort of kiddy tool by Linux developers, they are always set up to run without administrator privileges by default and contain things like Thunar's warning ribbon when they are run with admin rights.

    • An example of this is that bypassing or altering permissions for files should be not just possible, but easy… To many Linux purists, such talk is doing violence to the underlying concept of what Linux IS.
  • It's cool if there are keyboard shortcuts, but it's a graphical file manager, absolutely 100% of the functionality should be accessible easily through on-screen chrome. It's cute if there are context-specific right-click menus but that's no excuse for not having real on-screen controls. This is especially true of built in advanced file management tools like batch renaming, batch file conversion.

  • Thumbnails for images, videos, and folders containing them is also nice, but that feature can not be aloud to cause the file manager's responsiveness to lag even when the file managers encounters folders with 10,000+ images for the first time. In general, I want a dedicated image manager for that sort of thing.

  • Search doesn't matter. I have my files organized very very carefully. I have gone to look for a specific file and not found it in the first place I looked for it maybe 15 times in the last 30 years. If the ability to search local files were to disappear from my system tomorrow... years might pass before I even knew.

  • A good example in the windows world of a quality commercial general-purpose graphical file manager is Directory Opus. A good example of a free one in the windows world is FreeCommander.

Images/Media-files:

  • Most important: It should have a file system centric approach. I don't want some media-manager that tries to find all of my media all over the system and then re-organize it by date, or tag, or artist, or album, or any of that crap! I keep my media carefully and meticulously organized in FOLDERS!!! I want a media file manager to be a file manager FIRST and have media-specific tools SECOND.

  • It should cache thumbnails for fast retrieval and in a manner/location that is manageable by the user.

  • Details like size of thumbnail, and presentation of the file list should be extremely customizable. Over-all window and workspace customization remains important, but is less so in the media/image usage case since the primary purpose of the media file manager is as a launcher/browser of the media rather than a straight manager.

  • The basic minimum, should go without saying, features of file management should of course all be present.

  • The ability to merge directory contents from multiple directories is especially useful for a media file manager... That is select multiple directories in the tree-view pane, and then see a merged list of all the files in all of them in the contents pane... which can then be passed to a slide show or whatever.

  • Integrated viewers for all media files that include full-screen viewing, slide-shows, tiled slideshows, side-by-side and scaled comparisons, etc... and of course all of those fully customizable with standard features like adjustable delays, the ability to optionally auto-play matching audio files to images and videos without their own embedded audio, set files as wallpapers, etc.

  • Duplicate file finders with advanced rules-based automated management options upon finding a putative duplicate.

  • Media specific management options should also be available such as batch audio/image/video format conversion, batch volume balancing of audio so that all the files selected have the same average/peak sound intensity, lossless orientation rotation from the file list, multiple launch-with options to refer a media file to different external viewers or editors.

  • A good example of a commercial media file manager in the windows world is ACDSee, probably the best free one in the windows world is FastStone or XnView MP which also has a Linux version, although again it is sometimes hard to get it to work in a stable manner on LinuxMint.

Most of the sorts of features I list above have been semi-standard in some/all 3rd part graphical file managers in the windows world for more than 20 years. But then you see stuff like 4pane and XnView MP in the Linux world that are billed as advanced file managers, and in the Windows world they would be solid C+ or B efforts respectively, but are best-in-class options in the Linux world.

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[–] Wahaha ago  (edited ago)

Your expectations are clashing a little bit with the Linux way of not having big monolith programs that do everything, but having instead 50 separate programs working together accomplishing the same stuff and much more, where you would be able to replace every of those 50 programs with something else that has roughly the same functionality. This approach enables me to edit images in my file manager, for example, while it prevents you from having all the stuff you are used to out of the box. None of the things you want are impossible with my file manager of choice (ranger), they are just not set up out of the box, since the program doesn't want to make assumptions about which software you want integrated. For every functionality there's a bunch of different programs, that you would have to choose yourself by editing a config file.