Ubuntu Planning To Develop Its Own File Manager

[Luke]

Upstream Nemo still doesn't like Compiz

I've installed Nemo in Unity following WebUpd8's advice here, and its handling the desktop fine.

At least with Radeon r600 drivers, upstream Nemo (which I use in Cinnamon and can't install the patched version alongside) still has a bad redrawing issue in Compiz, I just tested it. When a window is moved, the new location is drawn fine, but the previous location and everything in between are not erased.

[mrugiero]

Okay, so based upon what I recently read, it sums up this way:
Gnome3 developers, in crusade for identity, break *any* external API, be it GTK3 or Gnome3 extensions on every release.

All those people, who write themes, extensions asking for API for the sake of mod-ability, modification, extensibility and fitting for personal purpose are answered with "this is discouraged, as it will jeopardize Gnome3 image". Think of M$ Exporer desktop and start button.

So, this must be the original reason why Canonical spawned Unity Desktop. Because Gnome3 would never ever accept anything, even with tag "optional".
It is crystal clear, that Gnome3 is building a closed door ecosystem.

So now, Canonical listened to opinions of users and started its own file manager. I vote this is good. However:
Knowing Canonical and its CLA, this is hardly any good from free software perspective, as they will most likely receive next to no adaption outside of Ubuntu.

That means two closed door ecosystem (with two various methods) exist now.
This is bad. But its not hurting me, so I could not care less

In fact, I have caja 1.6, aka nautilus from Gnome2 installed and I am happy about it.

Oh, so they avoid the closed door ecosystem by creating a more closed door ecosystem. Genius. Or maybe it has more to do with them wanting a different interface (someone in the forums claimed once that GNOME Shell wasn't so similar to Unity when Canonical decided to fork; I didn't check it, though), and the change to Qt is based on Qt being a nicer toolkit for them, and not having a stupid set of dependencies. I mean, it makes more sense to go all in with a single toolkit instead of mixing everything up, both because of consistency in the looks and to avoid wasting memory on loading every time two libraries intended to perform the same tasks.
I think this was going to happen sooner or later, and that in context it is the right call, assuming Dolphin doesn't fit them. Still, their CLA fetish will get them few outsider commits. They will probably receive some, mostly in form of bug fixes, but I don't think a lot of people will be willing to implement features to a CLA project without getting paid for it.

[Filiprino]

Why don't they use KDE?

Forget anything related to GNOME and go with KDE and its K's.

Because if Canonical continues this way, they'll end up with "QNOME".

[nightmarex]

I think it's funny that they removed the transparency effect from gnome-terminal. It's like one of the nicest features.

lxterminal is a nice replacement. odd no one mentioned pcmanfm when talking about filemanagers.

[mrugiero]

lxterminal is a nice replacement. odd no one mentioned pcmanfm when talking about filemanagers.

I like it, but I don't think it's stable or mature enough for Ubuntu. Although it's been a while since the last time I used it, maybe my ideas about it are just outdated.

[omer666]

Well, I may be one of the only readers out there to think that GNOME 3 gets many things right. In fact I think that their strategy is not to remove features as such, but more not to be frightened to start things over, even if it means breaking things. "If it ain't broken, don't fix it", does also mean that something broken, indeed needs to be fixed. From the beginning, it has been stated that transparency in gnome-terminal was not removed for the sake of simplicity, but that it was to be re-implemented later, because it was broken in the process of rewriting the whole software.

The point of rewriting several apps is that, as of today, Linux desktop is broken in several ways, and its complexity as well as its obsolescence as a whole is one of its main flaws. It must be the very reason why Red Hat lets its developpers act that way. If they had to comply to only half of the complaint they got in the beginning, they would not have done anything relevant in that particuliar direction, and we would be using a GNOME 2 desktop with brand new power-consuming theme and apps that would keep getting heavier and harder to maintain as time goes by.

As to what Ubuntu is planning to do, I would say that it's the same idea : developping new software that suits more their needs. As to how they may succeed, however, that's another story...

P.S. : oh and I do think that Windows 8 file manager is awful, with or without tabs.

[Aleve Sicofante]

I used nemo for awhile. It's only selling point is that it retains the old and familar. I realized that Nautilus is just as capabable w/o all the cruft, it just took some getting used to. What you get with it is simplicity and elegance. It is the same exact story as the brilliant Gnome 3. Too bad people don't get it. Ubuntu, is now just like google, apple, ms, asserting themselves for their own sake and encroaching on everything.

Maybe you and Gnome 3 don't get it... I HATE to look for alternatives. I'm laaaazy and I trust my provider (Ubuntu) to give me the best defaults. But in the case of Nautilus I had to look elsewhere. It's that messy.

Nautilus is severely crippled in areas that are important for everyday work, like switching from icons to list or zooming in/out, to name just a couple. They made it simpler only visually. In any other respect they made it much more complex to use. Where you could do everything with your mouse, you're being forced to use the keyboard. Where the keyboard was fine, you're forced to use the mouse. Where there was a simple and working search-in-folder-as-you-type feature, they forced a slow and dubious recursive search (which Ubuntu somehow restored lately). It's a mess, beyond the static screenshots, so "simple and elegant".

Ubuntu/Canonical, just like Google, Apple, MS, Red Hat, Suse or Mint have their own ideas, most of them properly justified and proving they work. Most of the ideas I've read by Gnome 3 "marshals" (Alan Day, mostly) are astonishingly wrong from a UI/UX design point of view, and too many times they are plain whimsical, as if they were just "playing around and see what happens". They look like they know what they're talking about (the rethoric is okay), but they really don't. Of course they can make pretty pictures out of their interfaces (minimalism is always fashionable... and also the easiest escape for poor designers), but that hardly justifies their gross mistakes.

I'm not saying Gnome 3 is "unusable". You can use almost anything once you get used or forced to it, but that's not the point. Nothing can justify what they've done to Nautilus. There's no way to explain why forcing the user to move back and forth from mouse to keyboard is a great idea or what's behind splitting the menus in two, especially in the way they've done it. The only other app from Gnome 3 I've approached is Contacts. I was wanting to like it, because there's no equivalent yet outside KDE -which I'm not touching with a ten foot pole- but boy is that useless. Sad, very sad indeed.

Even if you love all this crippling of applications for whatever reason, it -and the look and feel of the whole Gnome Shell approach- has no place in Unity, so it's only logical that Ubuntu moves away from it. And I, for one, thank them for that.

[BSDude]

lxterminal is a nice replacement. odd no one mentioned pcmanfm when talking about filemanagers.

^--- This. Now that LXDE is transitioning to Qt and PCManFM is already ported and as far as I understand in beta form why Canonical isn't looking at that option? I haven't used PCmanFM extensively but it felt as a very nice and light file manager. Although there would be breakages here and there, especially if the window manager was playing tricks.

[johnc]

From the beginning, it has been stated that transparency in gnome-terminal was not removed for the sake of simplicity, but that it was to be re-implemented later, because it was broken in the process of rewriting the whole software.

That is an absolute cluster-f of a way to do software development. And you never see it anywhere in any circumstance in any place that does professional software. The users are not beta testers that should be enduring the development process on their systems. They foist this stuff that isn't even half-baked yet onto us and then there's some kind of shock to see that all we can do is bang our heads onto our desks until unconsciousness sets in.

The point of rewriting several apps is that, as of today, Linux desktop is broken in several ways, and its complexity as well as its obsolescence as a whole is one of its main flaws.

The Linux desktop is broken because just as we begin to reach a stage of product completion and squashing the big bugs, somebody comes along and says, "Great! Let's throw that all out and start over!" The professional way to handle a transition like this is to maintain GNOME2 until GNOME3 is fully developed and ready for public consumption, then you release GNOME 3. You don't just pull the plug on it. Of course Canonical plays a role in this for Ubuntu users since they should have just maintained GNOME2 instead of giving us that broken mess of Unity and asking us to endure all of its brokenness. But when the entire system becomes a trainwreck of dependencies on GTK3 and other GNOME crap, I guess they felt they had to move with GNOME to keep up to date.

JMO. But GNOME is amateur software. Amateur at best.

[Aleve Sicofante]

It must be the very reason why Red Hat lets its developpers act that way.

The reason why Red Hat allows their developers to do anything at all in the desktop is because they couldn't care less. They are NOT putting Gnome Shell in RHEL 7 for THAT reason. What's very likely is that the Classic Destkop (which is what's shipping to paying customers) was forced on Gnome devs by Red Hat itself. Go figure...