Switch to a lightweight filemanager (Thunar)
Posted by ubuntukungfu on October 1st, 2008 
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Thunar can be used to replace Nautilus within the Ubuntu desktop for some operations, although bear in mind that Nautilus windows will still appear sometimes, such as when using Nautilus CD-R/DVD Creator.
Follow these steps to switch to Thunar:
- Start Synaptic, and search for and install the thunar and thunar-archive-plugin packages. After installation, you can run Thunar by typing thunar in a terminal window.
- To cause Thunar to open whenever you click an entry in the Places menu, you’ll need to edit a configuration file: open a terminal window, and type the following:
- Scroll to the bottom of the file, and look for the line that reads Exec=nautilus
--no-desktop %U. Change it so it reads Exec=thunar %U. Then save the file, log out and back in again, and test the changes by selecting Places--> Home.
gksu gedit /usr/share/applications/nautilus-folder-handler.desktop
This tip works equally well for any alternative file manager. Others you might like to try are Konqueror (KDE’s file manager), Dolphin (KDE4’s file manager), and Rox-filer, a stripped-down file manager that is extremely lightweight. Just use Synaptic to search for and install konqeuror, doplhin, or rox-filer, respectively. When altering the earlier nautilus-folder-handler.desktop file to make Rox-filer the default, change the line to read Exec=rox-filer, without the %U; Dolphin and Konqueror still require the %U after the command. Note that Rox-filer’s configuration is carried out by right-clicking a blank spot in its program window. It doesn’t use a traditional menu system, like most application windows.
If you want a lightweight command-line file manager, install Midnight Commander (search for and install the mc package using Synaptic). Then type mc at the prompt to start the program. Once it’s started, hit Alt+1, use the cursor keys to highlight Contents, and then hit Enter. This will display the help file explaining how to use the program. If you ever used Norton Commander back in the days of DOS, you’ll find Midnight Commander very familiar, because it’s modeled on that product.
To go back to using Nautilus after installing Thunar (or Konqueror/Dolphin/Rox-Filer), just edit the nautilus-folder-handler.desktop file again, and change the line you edited to read Exec=nautilus --no-desktop %U (note there are two dashes before no-desktop). Then save the file, and log out and back in again.
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This is an extract from the new book Ubuntu Kung Fu, which was published last week and contains over 300 fun and useful tips, tricks, hints and hacks for Ubuntu users. Written by award-winning Linux author Keir Thomas, it’s available at all good bookstores and also in PDF format for a recession-busting $22.
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October 1st, 2008 at 1:57 am
Thunar is light weight and quick to load, but it’s missing some key features that keep me from using it.
The deal breakers:
1. No file search capability.
2. Network shares are completely inaccessible to Thunar. It cannot connect to networks, view files on networks or copy files to and from network shares. The developers suggest it may never have this capability.
It’s still amazing to me how heavy-weight and feature-poor most Linux file managers are in comparison to the standard Windows file manager. The 8 year old Windows 2000 file manager is much lighter weight and better featured than Nautilus or Thunar.
October 1st, 2008 at 2:25 pm
Thanks for the detailed explanation. For those who happen to be less capable of making the changes comfortably that you mention in your article, I suggest the following:
October 2nd, 2008 at 3:33 pm
It doesnt works for me. I’ve changed /usr/share/applications/nautilus-folder-handler.desktop and after logout, login and clicking on Home handler on my desktop nautilus is running.
BTW. Tim, where is the “following” ?
October 2nd, 2008 at 3:35 pm
FIle managers have long been a bone of contention with me. I was astonished to read recent reports of the GNOME developers considering their “job done”. Nowhere near, guys! Nautilus needs a LOT of work. How about making it start instantly, rather than taking a few seconds to appear each time I boot? Then we can start working elastic banding of files in list mode, and getting a decent “grid” view for icons so they don’t always look oddly spaced. However, I must admit that the tabbed interface they’ve recently added is a genius stroke, and may lead to me installing Ubuntu 8.10, even though I’m mostly happy with Ubuntu 8.04.
But as for connecting to network shares, I’m not sure what you mean. You should be able to create a network mount and just access that…? Thunar will have no problems because it won’t be aware it’s accessing a network share.
Nowadays Ubuntu provides mount points in the hidden .gvfs folder in your /home directory if you choose to access them using a desktop icon. Or you could just add a permanent mount point in fstab (the old fashioned way). Or even just create a desktop launcher that ran a mount script… There are lots of ways to get around this issue, and none of them would make me stop using Thunar.
October 2nd, 2008 at 6:01 pm
oops, sorry about that, I must have forgotten to paste it…
http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/nonautilusplease
October 4th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
I guess the best file manager remains Krusader…
October 4th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
pcmanfm seems to be a better file management too. guess what it can manage the desktop . has tab-support. open-in-root.
All these are enabled by default.
I haven’t tried krusader yet so i guess i should try it out first and then which is better.
October 5th, 2008 at 3:46 pm
Konquerer all the way. You can config it to be really stripped down, and it does *everything*. For things it doesn’t do you can write your own stuff and link it through service menus. I tried Dolphin for 6 months but went back to Konqueror in the end, much happier. Great.
October 6th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
Yee,
I also think Nautilus need a lot of thingd to be done/modified
- Midnight commander views
- There’s a lot of lost space around it’s winows
- Some views are not very nice
- The connection to remote hists, v¡a ssh, are clumsy and you need to give the password to many times
-Previws on the sidebar
-Information on the sidebar: information on the content of the file (duration, author, etc. for audio, etc.; size,. for images)
- Nicer icons
October 15th, 2008 at 3:42 am
how it is with PCManFM?
without the %U or with the %U?
November 14th, 2008 at 10:10 pm
Here are some screenshot of thunar using samba share and tracker for file search:
http://cody.zapto.org/?p=41
but they are not finished or ready to integrate in thunar.