What Linux File Manager project would be interested in adding more features ?
Windows File Explorer is the best in terms of features, most Linux File managers lack basic functionality.
If someone dares to point that on redit they get “Then go use windows” (Linux is not a religion). or it’s opensource go do it yourself.
Is there a File Manager project that would like to implement features, there are many projects that allow feature request but don’t act on it.
I got many ideas.
Windows file explorer lacked tabs when dolphin had them for a decade or so and its still not even close to even the top of file managers. Also its terrible slow, unreliable, crashes often and has 4 different UIs baked in.
Do some plugins for Dolphin, I feel like they are neat because a) other devs that want to implement a function now have a blueprint for it b) with downloads/stars metric that these add-on stores provide you get a good idea of what the community actually wants.
File managers often have a bunch of plugins that add extra functionality. You could check those or try write your own for what functions you would like.
Whenever I have to use windows, the file manager is the thing that pisses me off the most. It’s utterly terrible to use. No tabs or extra panes. Directories exist in some kind of unspecified limbo, like recycle bin and my documents. Multiple copying is done all at once instead of queueing. Files aren’t organised cleanly or clearly. If you want to change config it’s hidden in a menu somewhere, you can’t just edit the config files directly. Gross.
Out of curiosity what mandatory features would you consider missing?
Preview Panel, Switch from breadcrum to directry only when clicked on remove that ugly arrow (nemo), View Selector is ugly, .directory file is a hit or miss across file managers File Picker doesn’t have a place jump to a directory, FIle Picker no Ctrl Shift N No recent panel
Preview Panel
I use
grepfor previews, it’s very good.Switch from breadcrum to directry only when clicked on remove that ugly arrow (nemo),
cdI think does what you want here.FIle Picker no Ctrl Shift N
No idea what that does.
No recent panel
Find and
cdin shell history should work.Somehow I expect a “GUI+Mouse is clearly better and thus your suggestions are worthless” response :-P
I wish people realized that there are vastly different possible approaches to different tasks and that one can be a lot less disappointed/stressed/angry by accepting one may have to learn a different paradigm once one has chosen to (semi-)commit to a new piece of tech…
I was half joking exactly with that intent. Hopefully OP sees that different is not explicitly bad.
Frankly: You come across less as “I am missing these features in many Linux file managers” and more like “I tried the default filemanager of my Linux distro and am angry the UX isn’t identical to that of Windows”. That’s not going to garner you much sympathy. Of the things you listed, I’d only consider a “preview” pane (that I’d rather not have, because of the security implications of having a separate potentially vulnerable parser that may receive less dev attention when issues are found) and maybe a “recent panel” (Not sure what one needs that for, I’d rather my system not track my actions so blatantly easy to find) actual features, and, yeah, quite a few Linux file managers can do something like those, obviously.
What feature do you want, copilot integration?
The problem is not the lack of ideas, it is the programmers number and tech debt.
You can contribute to Dolphin KDE Plasma File Explorer: https://develop.kde.org/
Windows File Explorer is the best in terms of features, most Linux File managers lack basic functionality
This is a very, very interesting take. I have seen nobody with this opinion in my life before
Suggest me a file manager
KDE dolphin. I have no idea what you are describing in half your items, but it certainly has preview panels, and lots of things you don’t mention: open terminal here, synchronized terminal panel, split windows, support for browsing over SFTP, keeping folder tree as you browser down or not, zoom, etc.
Did they add tabs or split view with Windows 11? It was ridiculous how they never had this in 10
It has tabs now, but they are painfully slow and janky
I’d love to see COSMIC Files on par with Dolphin, and Dolphin is vastly superior to Windows file explorer in the first place.
Having ideas is generally not enough.
Volunteers don’t take requests. They take suggestions. They only act on the ones they want to.
If you want something to actually get implemented, offering a monetary reward, hiring a dev to contribute, or contributing yourself, is the best way to go.
I’ve gotten several features I wanted into software I use, by adding them myself.
