Ubuntu's File Manager App Has A Long TODO List

Besides finally moving onto BlueZ 5, developers during the first day of Ubuntu 15.04's online summit also discussed the improvements still needed to be done for the "File Manager" application used by the Ubuntu Phone/Touch stack and eventually by the desktop Ubuntu under Unity 8.

The Ubuntu File Manager App will eventually work its way to the desktop once Unity 8 is used by the desktop rather than just the touch/phone editions. For now, fortunately GNOME's Nautilus is still the default as it appears the Ubuntu File Manager App still has a long ways to go.

Among the items still left on the file manager TODO list include multi-select files, support for SD cards to appear within "Places", support for extracting more file archives (including .tar, .bz2, .tar.bz2 and many other common compressed file formats), drag and drop support with the desktop, support for multiple tabs, support for accessing network drives (Samba, NFS, FTP, etc), support for bookmarks, more keyboard shortcuts support, better localization support, and many other changes.

While I haven't tried Ubuntu Touch / Unity 8 in a while, it sounds like the Ubuntu file manager app is still incredibly basic without support for many common Linux file manager tasks... Hopefully many of these work items will be scratched off during the Ubuntu 15.04 cycle as we could potentially see this become the default on the desktop for Ubuntu 15.10. The lengthy TODO list is also a shock given that an Ubuntu tablet could come next month and Meizu phones with Ubuntu are expected in December.

Find out more of the Ubuntu File Manager App plans from the session notes.