4 ms·

Default File Manager with Unity8 in future desktops

27 points by zeis 13y ago

I'm pleased to see that they're working on a better file manager.

sixbrx 13y ago
Is Ubuntu replacing everything above the Kernel one piece at a time?
- taeric 13y ago
  Would that necessarily be a bad thing?
  - hdevalence 13y ago
    Yes. See my earlier comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7083763 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7083763
    - akerl_ 13y ago
      Are we really going to fault Canonical for developing new open source projects, or for those projects not being adopted outside of Ubuntu? I don't have a need for another file manager any more than I needed another init system, but if this was being done by anybody besides Canonical, the comments would say ~"So stoked to see a new option disrupting the file manager space". They're betting they can provide a better UX with their own tool. If they fail, or can't maintain it, or whatever, then that's on them, and people will shift onto other distros. I'm looking forward to seeing what they do better, in the hopes that other projects can benefit as well.
      - hdevalence 13y ago
        If Canonical wants to develop a new file manager, power to them! I, too, am looking forward to seeing what they do better. My comment was specifically in regards to the idea of 'what's wrong with Canonical reinventing everything', e.g., discarding Wayland for Mir. Sorry if that was unclear.
  - phaer 13y ago
    In theory: No, but it might make sense to make the difference between Ubuntu and all other Linux distributions clear. Maybe Ubuntu should not be called "Linux" anymore, just like android which also uses the kernel but has it's own userland. In practice: Yes, Cannonicals questionable open source policy could throw free software desktops a few years back. Just look at Mir for an example. EDIT: or hdevalences comment below!
    - taeric 13y ago
      There appears to be a giant difference between ubuntu and android, though. Seems somewhat vindictive to feel ubuntu is no longer linux.
  - snird 13y ago
    it might just be. the idea of open source encourage them to contribute and make current projects better - if nautilus isn't suit for them for some reason they should try to cooperate with this project developers to add features and changes, and IMHO only if they get some really tough "no" on their most needed features they should start their own replacement. preferably as a fork. just as google does with webkit - they contribute and make the current open source project better and only when the project management (AKA Apple) blocked them too hard they had to fork it.
  - nisa 13y ago
    If you take Unity as an example. It's a wonderful idea that is full of bloat, bugs and small usability problems but nobody really seems to care about it.
  - morsch 13y ago
    It's bad if for no other reason than they're spreading their resources thin. They've already got a huge number of projects to maintain -- a window manager, an entire graphics stack, an init system, a cloud storage stack, all used almost exlusively in Ubuntu, and all in addition to the more traditional distro duties of maintaining a set of kernel patches and an up-to-date and secure software repository. I'd rather they concentrate on the latter.
- kudu 13y ago
  You're thinking of Mint.
- zeis 13y ago
  Nautilus, like any other software of the GNOME project is subject to the "unexpected" changes by the GNOME team... as when they decided to remove the type-ahead-find feature. As long as the Ubuntu team create better software and replace "bad pieces" I'm with them.
  - dewyatt 13y ago
    I spent a good chunk of time restoring type-ahead find to Nautilus, which is now available in trusty-proposed (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nautilus/+bug/1164016 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nautilus/+bug/1164...). Now I read this. Not very happy.
    - zeis 13y ago
      At least Ubuntu 14.04 will have type-ahead find. Thank you for all your work.
      - dewyatt 13y ago
        I suppose that's true. Thanks!
  - vidarh 13y ago
    I used to love Nautilus. It's gotten steadily worse year by year.
- spion 13y ago
  In the case of nautilus, they're right. Gnome developers are slowly becoming delusional and losing track of what they're supposed to accomplish. Therefore, its time to put Gnome aside and build something new.
  - zeis 13y ago
    I totally agree. Starting from Gnome Shell to removing type-ahead find from Nautilus, GNOME developers' decisions have been more and more deluding.
morsch 13y ago
I don't like the NIH syndrome, but I like using what's probably the most popular distro and especially the software variety in the community PPAs. So what's the best way to get a more vanilla Linux desktop experience without losing the convenience of the Ubuntu PPA ecosystem? Use a Ubuntu remix? Can you use PPAs with Debian? Or do you not even need them with the cutting-edge Debian variant (whatever it's called again)? edit: NIH, not NIMBY, thanks kudu for the correction.
- kudu 13y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIMBY https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIMBY I don't understand how it applies in this context?
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - callahad 13y ago
    I think the OP meant NIH (Not Invented Here), rather than NIMBY.
- catinsocks 13y ago
  If you like a DE use the remix they are pretty vanilla (ubuntu gnome, lubuntu, kubuntu, xubuntu) you can make them more vanilla if you forgo installing a desktop cd and just install the DE without the *-desktop package from a minimal or alternative cd install. Otherwise give up on ppas (they may or may not work on debian) and look at maybe open build service or something. Mint i think is compatabile with ppas but mint is very not vanilla
- leephillips 13y ago
  I use Ubuntu without any desktop, using the dwm window manager. My "file manager" is the bash shell. None of their interface experiments affect me, but I get the advantages of the drivers and PPAs. I haven't yet seen anything in any desktop environment that interests me; and running this way leads to low memory overhead and a very snappy response on older hardware.
kudu 13y ago
I liked the days when Ubuntu was a nice, simple distro that I could recommend to beginners. Nowadays, every desktop distro is becoming more and more of an "island". The main "alternative" to Ubuntu, Linux Mint, is also replacing pretty much every piece of the OS with its own (NIH). I would actually like for there to be a nice, simple distro that anybody could use, with only general, vanilla Linux software.
- akerl_ 13y ago
  I'm sure that there's going to be plenty of dissent on this, but Arch is a pretty simple distro and attempts to keep packages as vanilla as possible. Their wiki is also an awesome resource (I find myself using it even when troubleshooting things on non-Arch systems, to great effect). It's definitely not a one-click deployment, and they've made some design decisions I'm not a fan of, but as far as simple systems go, they're on a great track.
- phaer 13y ago
  > I would actually like for there to be a nice, simple distro that anybody could use, with only general, vanilla Linux software. Your are looking, depending on your use case, either for Debian or Fedora.
- w1ntermute 13y ago
  Try Xubuntu. The interface is about boring and rock solid as it gets - it hasn't changed in years. And you still get Ubuntu's excellent hardware support.
- dombili 13y ago
  Try elementary OS.
  - mcintyre1994 13y ago
    Elementary is amazing but isn't it one of the most NIH-inflicted distros? Custom DE, app manager, dock, I think every app it ships with is theirs, etc. I guess it's a bit more vanilla than the Ubuntu it builds on, but it's all very NIH.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
Aardwolf 13y ago
I bet it's gonna be a file manager useable by power users with built in terminal, full copypastable path shown by default, ability to navigate inside of zip files as if they're directories, tree view, directory bookmarks, etc... Ah wait, no, that are the features of file managers of 10 years ago, after that they only got dumbed down to target regular joe. Yay progress.
- MartynX 13y ago
  Do you have any examples of file managers like this from back then?
  - Aardwolf 13y ago
    KDE Konqueror
    - jeorgun 13y ago
      For the record, Dolphin has all of those features as well (although text-path-by-default and open-zipfile-as-folder both need to be enabled manually).
- ossreality 13y ago
  Sounds like you're looking for Dolphin, which is both widely used and actively developed and supported.
- jfoster 13y ago
  Ubuntu have made it really clear that they want to be a competitor to Windows and be very different from typical Linux operating systems. If you're using Ubuntu and expected it to be like Debian, you made the wrong choice of operating system. In my opinion, Ubuntu and Debian are both great, but they are targeting massively different types of users.
  - Aardwolf 13y ago
    A competitor to Windows? I'd say even Windows 98 has a better UI than what Ubuntu has become: at least Windows 98 has a taskbar that can show multiple instances of the same program. (And fortunately, so does KDE still, for now, for long I hope)
jfoster 13y ago
Canonical have an interesting challenge. The people who are most aware of their product are not their target market, and seem to actively dislike the direction their product is headed in. Worse, those people seem to be under the impression that they are the users that Canonical are targeting. In my opinion, this phenomena might sufficiently explain why "desktop Linux" never went mainstream. No previous "desktop Linux" company was so willing to ignore the desires of existing Linux users in order to make a product that would be good for their target market. Canonical do seem to be bold enough to have a good chance at pulling it off despite their critics, though.
- kazagistar 13y ago
  I actually hope you are right. While I am not exactly happy with Ubuntu's direction myself, I would be more then happy if they succeed at attracting more linux users.
- taeric 13y ago
  Meh. I think you are seeing more in the vocal minority than anything else. For myself, ubuntu has been fine and remains the distribution of choice. I will confess I have considered toying with arch. I do build quite a few things from source, already. Still, I have found very little to fault ubuntu for. (And, really, I just want a high res laptop. Which I will quickly put ubuntu on.)
wirrbel 13y ago
I have been using Linux for a long time, Gnome since v. 1.4. While I am enthusiastic about the platform as a whole, I feel let down by the Desktop teams as a whole. While a few aspects of the UI are greatly improved (anti aliasing, localization, FX, etc.). In terms of functionality, applications have not gained much. Nautilus especially has a history of removing features for the sake of "Design" that people depend on. remember the time when nautilus always opened new windows when navigating the file system tree? Or the gnome project announcing to remove the middle-click paste? Ubuntu moving the menu out of the windows into a mac-style menu bar on top of the screen, a behaviour you could not revert as a non-admin and menus were invisible (in favor of the window title) when not hovering over that top-of-screen area? In general I do value thoughtfully designed user interfaces and I see that care has to be taken to avoid clutter and keep them clean and sanitized. But with the linux desktops, it just feels like the designers have lost their focus and just harp on _abstract_ principles. As a linux enthusiast it saddens me that Gnome has not even come somewhere near to a functional GUI that could compete to MacOS or Windows 7 in terms of ease of use and functionality. To me, the CLI ecosphere will always make me want to choose linux. Yet with the linux desktop I have more than ever the feeling that I have an inferior piece of software in front of me.
bbanyc 13y ago
Unity is already moving from Gtk to Qt, so the move away from user-visible GNOME elements is natural. The question is what they're going to do with the GNOME "plumbing". To fork and maintain a mixed Gtk/Qt legacy codebase, or to reimplement everything from scratch...neither seems attractive.

27 points by zeis 13y ago

I'm pleased to see that they're working on a better file manager.

sixbrx 13y ago

Is Ubuntu replacing everything above the Kernel one piece at a time?

taeric 13y ago
Would that necessarily be a bad thing?
- hdevalence 13y ago
  Yes. See my earlier comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7083763 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7083763
  - akerl_ 13y ago
    Are we really going to fault Canonical for developing new open source projects, or for those projects not being adopted outside of Ubuntu? I don't have a need for another file manager any more than I needed another init system, but if this was being done by anybody besides Canonical, the comments would say ~"So stoked to see a new option disrupting the file manager space". They're betting they can provide a better UX with their own tool. If they fail, or can't maintain it, or whatever, then that's on them, and people will shift onto other distros. I'm looking forward to seeing what they do better, in the hopes that other projects can benefit as well.
    - hdevalence 13y ago
      If Canonical wants to develop a new file manager, power to them! I, too, am looking forward to seeing what they do better. My comment was specifically in regards to the idea of 'what's wrong with Canonical reinventing everything', e.g., discarding Wayland for Mir. Sorry if that was unclear.
- phaer 13y ago
  In theory: No, but it might make sense to make the difference between Ubuntu and all other Linux distributions clear. Maybe Ubuntu should not be called "Linux" anymore, just like android which also uses the kernel but has it's own userland. In practice: Yes, Cannonicals questionable open source policy could throw free software desktops a few years back. Just look at Mir for an example. EDIT: or hdevalences comment below!
  - taeric 13y ago
    There appears to be a giant difference between ubuntu and android, though. Seems somewhat vindictive to feel ubuntu is no longer linux.
- snird 13y ago
  it might just be. the idea of open source encourage them to contribute and make current projects better - if nautilus isn't suit for them for some reason they should try to cooperate with this project developers to add features and changes, and IMHO only if they get some really tough "no" on their most needed features they should start their own replacement. preferably as a fork. just as google does with webkit - they contribute and make the current open source project better and only when the project management (AKA Apple) blocked them too hard they had to fork it.
- nisa 13y ago
  If you take Unity as an example. It's a wonderful idea that is full of bloat, bugs and small usability problems but nobody really seems to care about it.
- morsch 13y ago
  It's bad if for no other reason than they're spreading their resources thin. They've already got a huge number of projects to maintain -- a window manager, an entire graphics stack, an init system, a cloud storage stack, all used almost exlusively in Ubuntu, and all in addition to the more traditional distro duties of maintaining a set of kernel patches and an up-to-date and secure software repository. I'd rather they concentrate on the latter.
kudu 13y ago
You're thinking of Mint.
zeis 13y ago
Nautilus, like any other software of the GNOME project is subject to the "unexpected" changes by the GNOME team... as when they decided to remove the type-ahead-find feature. As long as the Ubuntu team create better software and replace "bad pieces" I'm with them.
- dewyatt 13y ago
  I spent a good chunk of time restoring type-ahead find to Nautilus, which is now available in trusty-proposed (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nautilus/+bug/1164016 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nautilus/+bug/1164...). Now I read this. Not very happy.
  - zeis 13y ago
    At least Ubuntu 14.04 will have type-ahead find. Thank you for all your work.
    - dewyatt 13y ago
      I suppose that's true. Thanks!
- vidarh 13y ago
  I used to love Nautilus. It's gotten steadily worse year by year.
spion 13y ago
In the case of nautilus, they're right. Gnome developers are slowly becoming delusional and losing track of what they're supposed to accomplish. Therefore, its time to put Gnome aside and build something new.
- zeis 13y ago
  I totally agree. Starting from Gnome Shell to removing type-ahead find from Nautilus, GNOME developers' decisions have been more and more deluding.

morsch 13y ago

I don't like the NIH syndrome, but I like using what's probably the most popular distro and especially the software variety in the community PPAs. So what's the best way to get a more vanilla Linux desktop experience without losing the convenience of the Ubuntu PPA ecosystem? Use a Ubuntu remix? Can you use PPAs with Debian? Or do you not even need them with the cutting-edge Debian variant (whatever it's called again)? edit: NIH, not NIMBY, thanks kudu for the correction.

kudu 13y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIMBY https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIMBY I don't understand how it applies in this context?
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- callahad 13y ago
  I think the OP meant NIH (Not Invented Here), rather than NIMBY.
catinsocks 13y ago
If you like a DE use the remix they are pretty vanilla (ubuntu gnome, lubuntu, kubuntu, xubuntu) you can make them more vanilla if you forgo installing a desktop cd and just install the DE without the *-desktop package from a minimal or alternative cd install. Otherwise give up on ppas (they may or may not work on debian) and look at maybe open build service or something. Mint i think is compatabile with ppas but mint is very not vanilla
leephillips 13y ago
I use Ubuntu without any desktop, using the dwm window manager. My "file manager" is the bash shell. None of their interface experiments affect me, but I get the advantages of the drivers and PPAs. I haven't yet seen anything in any desktop environment that interests me; and running this way leads to low memory overhead and a very snappy response on older hardware.

kudu 13y ago

I liked the days when Ubuntu was a nice, simple distro that I could recommend to beginners. Nowadays, every desktop distro is becoming more and more of an "island". The main "alternative" to Ubuntu, Linux Mint, is also replacing pretty much every piece of the OS with its own (NIH). I would actually like for there to be a nice, simple distro that anybody could use, with only general, vanilla Linux software.

akerl_ 13y ago
I'm sure that there's going to be plenty of dissent on this, but Arch is a pretty simple distro and attempts to keep packages as vanilla as possible. Their wiki is also an awesome resource (I find myself using it even when troubleshooting things on non-Arch systems, to great effect). It's definitely not a one-click deployment, and they've made some design decisions I'm not a fan of, but as far as simple systems go, they're on a great track.
phaer 13y ago
> I would actually like for there to be a nice, simple distro that anybody could use, with only general, vanilla Linux software. Your are looking, depending on your use case, either for Debian or Fedora.
w1ntermute 13y ago
Try Xubuntu. The interface is about boring and rock solid as it gets - it hasn't changed in years. And you still get Ubuntu's excellent hardware support.
dombili 13y ago
Try elementary OS.
- mcintyre1994 13y ago
  Elementary is amazing but isn't it one of the most NIH-inflicted distros? Custom DE, app manager, dock, I think every app it ships with is theirs, etc. I guess it's a bit more vanilla than the Ubuntu it builds on, but it's all very NIH.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

Aardwolf 13y ago

I bet it's gonna be a file manager useable by power users with built in terminal, full copypastable path shown by default, ability to navigate inside of zip files as if they're directories, tree view, directory bookmarks, etc... Ah wait, no, that are the features of file managers of 10 years ago, after that they only got dumbed down to target regular joe. Yay progress.

MartynX 13y ago
Do you have any examples of file managers like this from back then?
- Aardwolf 13y ago
  KDE Konqueror
  - jeorgun 13y ago
    For the record, Dolphin has all of those features as well (although text-path-by-default and open-zipfile-as-folder both need to be enabled manually).
ossreality 13y ago
Sounds like you're looking for Dolphin, which is both widely used and actively developed and supported.
jfoster 13y ago
Ubuntu have made it really clear that they want to be a competitor to Windows and be very different from typical Linux operating systems. If you're using Ubuntu and expected it to be like Debian, you made the wrong choice of operating system. In my opinion, Ubuntu and Debian are both great, but they are targeting massively different types of users.
- Aardwolf 13y ago
  A competitor to Windows? I'd say even Windows 98 has a better UI than what Ubuntu has become: at least Windows 98 has a taskbar that can show multiple instances of the same program. (And fortunately, so does KDE still, for now, for long I hope)

jfoster 13y ago

Canonical have an interesting challenge. The people who are most aware of their product are not their target market, and seem to actively dislike the direction their product is headed in. Worse, those people seem to be under the impression that they are the users that Canonical are targeting. In my opinion, this phenomena might sufficiently explain why "desktop Linux" never went mainstream. No previous "desktop Linux" company was so willing to ignore the desires of existing Linux users in order to make a product that would be good for their target market. Canonical do seem to be bold enough to have a good chance at pulling it off despite their critics, though.

kazagistar 13y ago
I actually hope you are right. While I am not exactly happy with Ubuntu's direction myself, I would be more then happy if they succeed at attracting more linux users.
taeric 13y ago
Meh. I think you are seeing more in the vocal minority than anything else. For myself, ubuntu has been fine and remains the distribution of choice. I will confess I have considered toying with arch. I do build quite a few things from source, already. Still, I have found very little to fault ubuntu for. (And, really, I just want a high res laptop. Which I will quickly put ubuntu on.)

wirrbel 13y ago

I have been using Linux for a long time, Gnome since v. 1.4. While I am enthusiastic about the platform as a whole, I feel let down by the Desktop teams as a whole. While a few aspects of the UI are greatly improved (anti aliasing, localization, FX, etc.). In terms of functionality, applications have not gained much. Nautilus especially has a history of removing features for the sake of "Design" that people depend on. remember the time when nautilus always opened new windows when navigating the file system tree? Or the gnome project announcing to remove the middle-click paste? Ubuntu moving the menu out of the windows into a mac-style menu bar on top of the screen, a behaviour you could not revert as a non-admin and menus were invisible (in favor of the window title) when not hovering over that top-of-screen area? In general I do value thoughtfully designed user interfaces and I see that care has to be taken to avoid clutter and keep them clean and sanitized. But with the linux desktops, it just feels like the designers have lost their focus and just harp on _abstract_ principles. As a linux enthusiast it saddens me that Gnome has not even come somewhere near to a functional GUI that could compete to MacOS or Windows 7 in terms of ease of use and functionality. To me, the CLI ecosphere will always make me want to choose linux. Yet with the linux desktop I have more than ever the feeling that I have an inferior piece of software in front of me.

bbanyc 13y ago

Unity is already moving from Gtk to Qt, so the move away from user-visible GNOME elements is natural. The question is what they're going to do with the GNOME "plumbing". To fork and maintain a mixed Gtk/Qt legacy codebase, or to reimplement everything from scratch...neither seems attractive.