How to Replace Nautilus with PCMan File Manager in Ubuntu
Posted by admin on May 20th, 2008 
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Features
* Extremly fast and lightweight
* Can be started in one second on normal machine
* Tabbed browsing (similar to Firefox)
* Drag & Drop support
* Files can be dragged among tabs
* Load large directories in reasonable time
* File association support (Default application)
* Basic thumbnail support
* Bookmarks support
* Handles non-UTF-8 encoded filenames correctly
* Provide icon view and detailed list view
* Standard compliant (Follows FreeDesktop.org)
* Clean and user-friendly interface (GTK+ 2)
Install pcmanfm using the following command
sudo aptitude install pcmanfm
This will complete the instalaltion
Replacing Nautilus with PCman
You need to open pcman from Applications > System Tools > PCMan File Manager
Now you need to type the following path in address bar and press enter
/usr/share/applications
Now you need to go Tools > Open Current Folder as root.
Enter the root password and click ok
Now you should see similar to the following screen
Make a backup copy of the files below (copy and paste and add “_bak” on the end of the file name)
/usr/share/applications/nautilus-computer.desktop
/usr/share/applications/nautilus-folder-handler.desktop
Now you need to open the nautilus-computer.desktop,nautilus-folder-handler.desktop files and Change the line in each with starts with Exec=
For nautilus-computer.desktop:
Exec=pcmanfm /
For nautilus-folder-handler.desktop:
Exec=pcmanfm %U
After changes Save and exit those files.
From now on your Nautilus replaced with fileman you can see as follows
PCman version details
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May 20th, 2008 at 5:36 am
Does PCMan support ftp transfers? It is quicker for me than Nautilus but I need to browse and transfer to ftp from the file browser. Some old information here but not sure if anything came of it? Anyone help?
May 20th, 2008 at 5:49 am
O.K. after closer investigation it appears ftp access is still a work in progress:
From the GnomeFiles PCMan page:
May 20th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
PCman is on the right track, but still immature…
…some keyboard shortcuts are missing.
Ctrl+L : focus on location bar
Ctrl+Shift+N : create new folder
And the folders in the location bar are not clickable.
May 20th, 2008 at 7:52 pm
Am I crazy? I can’t find the two files specified.
/usr/share/applications/nautilus-computer.desktop
/usr/share/applications/nautilus-folder-handler.desktop
I navigate to /usr/share/applications and see neither.
I run a search on the system for both *.desktop files and they are found in the path /usr/share/applications but they aren’t actually there when I browse via PCMAN or Nautilus.
Kind of freaking me out
I’ve tried Ctrl+H to see if they are hidden, which they are not. Any ideas?
May 20th, 2008 at 8:19 pm
Weird.
I was able to see them from the terminal. Made backups, made changes, save/close, money.
Thanks for the howto!
May 20th, 2008 at 10:26 pm
I can’t believe that you will save the time invested in this post in the next 20 years of using this software. I just can’t see the point. Blessings on all who use it.
May 21st, 2008 at 6:19 am
On a related note, I can also recommend a related article:
How to replace your GNOME panel with BarPanel.
BarPanel is an alternative to gnome panel just as pcmanfm is for the nautilus file manager.
May 21st, 2008 at 7:00 pm
Thats nice but i wrote additional steps in ubuntu forums to get a complete replace.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=692238
Look for the second post.
May 23rd, 2008 at 1:26 am
I still think its missing a tree view… Thats something I’d like to see in Nautilus.
June 5th, 2008 at 10:44 am
Thanks for this page. PCMan File Manager is light and nice and I followed your instructions. Yet it crashes each time I want to browse an image dir. Also if I mount an external devicxe nautilus takes precedence and I can’t copy from a Nautilus window to a PCMan File Manager window.
Finally bookmarks don’t seem to remain in the tree — Brett I can see a tree view all right (just make it appear).
Rox-filer may not be as integrated with Gnome but it rocks.
July 4th, 2008 at 8:39 am
Really nice tip, now me using PCMan file manager instead of resources hungry Nautilus. The only draw back is cannot move the icons on the desktop and have to configure wallpaper using PCMan instead of System > Preference > Appearance
August 27th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
Great tip. I have a question though. Instead of PCman I want to change my file manager from nautilus to the kde4 dolphin… Can you post a write up on how to do that too?