For sure. Linux has a lot of great apps but there are times where it’ll become incredibly frustrating. For example, file explorers can be basic & frustrating… The best you’ll prob get is Dolphin.
Linux has the best file manager I’ve found on any platform: Krusader. It has twin panels, and a lot of the functionality is bound to FKeys: F2 Rename, F3 View, F4 Edit, F5 Copy, etc. F9 will open a terminal in the current directory. You can edit text files and uncompress zipped files from within Krusader. I’ve even done it on a remote filesystem over SSH.
I tried this, it’s nice indeed. The layout will require some getting used to for me, but I like how it lets me add my remote server as sftp bookmark and open files from there pretty seamlessly, even videos.
Isn’t Windows File Explorer considered basic? It only just got tabs in 11 right? That and clicking on a disconnected network share would cause it to hang for a good few minutes.
Sidebar defaults are bad. There’s no home directory. How do you get to your home directory? Cmd+shift+H, but can you get there without that special shortcut? You can’t see the file system’s structure in Finder. The GUI doesn’t have a way to go “up” in the directory structure. I don’t think you can do it in the GUI alone.
It won’t let you see stuff in like \tmp\ without a fight, too. I don’t know how to open stuff in places like that without cd’ing to the location in the terminal, and doing open . in the desired directory.
The list view is the least bad, but it gets unwieldy if your directories are deeply nested. It’s also bad if you started in the middle of the tree and want to go up. Gallery and column view are really bad for anything non trivial.
I often want to see the entire file path, and it really doesn’t want to cooperate. If I do find the file I’m looking for, and want the full path, it doesn’t want to give it. I don’t even know if there is a way to get it. Other than like cmd+clicking -> “new iterm2 tab here” -> pwd, which is not really that helpful of Finder.
Contrast with windows’ default explorer. It’s not perfect and I think windows11 made it worse, but still. Open it up, there’s the “my pc”, click through to my user directory, music, some album, then i can click the top thing and get the path. I can also see the whole tree on the left.
Whatever I was using in Mint was similar to windows’ Explorer. Had no complaints about it.
That would be a waste of my time. You’re not someone who needs to know how to use one, so what’s the point of telling you how to use one? You’re an intelligent human being, you can figure it out if and when you need to. Until then, whatever tech you’re using serves your needs so it’s no biggie.
Well, Windows Explorer is terrible, Dolphin is better but still not really that great, Nautilus is stripped back and barebones, Thunar is ancient and barely competes with what Windows XP had, and vifm is unreasonable unless you exclusively work in terminals. Did I miss any that are even remotely popular?
In fairness, Dolphin is definitely the best available on Linux. I think Finder strikes the perfect balance of simplicity and customization. It’s easy to figure out for a newbie and powerful enough for a developer. Dolphin’s learning curve is a bit steeper and in my view it has too many features on offer. This is a common problem with KDE software. It’s not a big deal because KDE stuff isn’t used on commercially-available products that need tech support, and anyone using Linux should be able to get by just fine with it, but I still think Finder is simply better software with a longer history and judicious use of new features
KDE stuff isn’t used on commercially-available products that need tech support
I’m sure there are organizations using Plasma desktop with IT departments supporting it, but I definitely take your point that Apple has orders of magnitude more spending on UI/UX and software development
I’m largely curious about Finder these days since I used macOS almost exclusively from the G4 days right up until about the time they switched to ARM, so it’s been a few years. I’m curious if Apple has made any significant improvements to Finder in the past, say, four years?
For sure. Linux has a lot of great apps but there are times where it’ll become incredibly frustrating. For example, file explorers can be basic & frustrating… The best you’ll prob get is Dolphin.
Linux has the best file manager I’ve found on any platform: Krusader. It has twin panels, and a lot of the functionality is bound to FKeys: F2 Rename, F3 View, F4 Edit, F5 Copy, etc. F9 will open a terminal in the current directory. You can edit text files and uncompress zipped files from within Krusader. I’ve even done it on a remote filesystem over SSH.
I tried this, it’s nice indeed. The layout will require some getting used to for me, but I like how it lets me add my remote server as sftp bookmark and open files from there pretty seamlessly, even videos.
I’m have to give this a look!
Isn’t Windows File Explorer considered basic? It only just got tabs in 11 right? That and clicking on a disconnected network share would cause it to hang for a good few minutes.
It isn’t perfect by any means, but compared to Nautilus & many others, it still has a lot of benefits that make things quicker overall.
I’ve only used Nemo in Linux, but I can’t think of anything Windows file explorer can do that it can’t.
I still contend that the best file browser ever made is the macOS Finder. When someone makes something that good for Linux, I’ll be very happy
What. What?? Finder is the fucking worst. It doesn’t have a sensible tree view, does it?
seems sensible to me? its not amazing but i dont mind it … what doesnt work for you?
Sidebar defaults are bad. There’s no home directory. How do you get to your home directory? Cmd+shift+H, but can you get there without that special shortcut? You can’t see the file system’s structure in Finder. The GUI doesn’t have a way to go “up” in the directory structure. I don’t think you can do it in the GUI alone.
It won’t let you see stuff in like \tmp\ without a fight, too. I don’t know how to open stuff in places like that without
cd
’ing to the location in the terminal, and doingopen .
in the desired directory.The list view is the least bad, but it gets unwieldy if your directories are deeply nested. It’s also bad if you started in the middle of the tree and want to go up. Gallery and column view are really bad for anything non trivial.
I often want to see the entire file path, and it really doesn’t want to cooperate. If I do find the file I’m looking for, and want the full path, it doesn’t want to give it. I don’t even know if there is a way to get it. Other than like cmd+clicking -> “new iterm2 tab here” ->
pwd
, which is not really that helpful of Finder.Contrast with windows’ default explorer. It’s not perfect and I think windows11 made it worse, but still. Open it up, there’s the “my pc”, click through to my user directory, music, some album, then i can click the top thing and get the path. I can also see the whole tree on the left.
Whatever I was using in Mint was similar to windows’ Explorer. Had no complaints about it.
You really don’t know how to use macOS, lol
Please. Elaborate.
That would be a waste of my time. You’re not someone who needs to know how to use one, so what’s the point of telling you how to use one? You’re an intelligent human being, you can figure it out if and when you need to. Until then, whatever tech you’re using serves your needs so it’s no biggie.
I was hoping you had some insight and revelations about how to use Finder.
I used treesize once to clean up my computer. That’s what a file system should be like.
Genuine question, is this trolling or do you seriously believe this?
Is it that outlandish that someone can appreciate a piece of closed-source software?
Appreciate isn’t the claim tho
Well, Windows Explorer is terrible, Dolphin is better but still not really that great, Nautilus is stripped back and barebones, Thunar is ancient and barely competes with what Windows XP had, and vifm is unreasonable unless you exclusively work in terminals. Did I miss any that are even remotely popular?
Dolphin seems great to me! What do you think Finder does better than Dolphin?
In fairness, Dolphin is definitely the best available on Linux. I think Finder strikes the perfect balance of simplicity and customization. It’s easy to figure out for a newbie and powerful enough for a developer. Dolphin’s learning curve is a bit steeper and in my view it has too many features on offer. This is a common problem with KDE software. It’s not a big deal because KDE stuff isn’t used on commercially-available products that need tech support, and anyone using Linux should be able to get by just fine with it, but I still think Finder is simply better software with a longer history and judicious use of new features
I’m sure there are organizations using Plasma desktop with IT departments supporting it, but I definitely take your point that Apple has orders of magnitude more spending on UI/UX and software development
I’m largely curious about Finder these days since I used macOS almost exclusively from the G4 days right up until about the time they switched to ARM, so it’s been a few years. I’m curious if Apple has made any significant improvements to Finder in the past, say, four years?