Last Updated on December 24, 2022
10. Tux Commander
Tux Commander is a windowed file manager with 2 panels side by side similar to popular Total Commander or Midnight Commander file managers. There’s a fairly good range of features.
Tux Commander uses the old GTK2 windowing toolkit. It hasn’t seen a new release since 2009.
Website: tuxcmd.sourceforge.net
License: GNU General Public License version 2.0
11. Donnatella
This is a fairly unconventional file manager with some unique and advanced features including registers, marks, and click modes.
Unlike most (GUI) file managers, Donnatella uses a system of key modes, inspired by what can be found in vim. This means that every key can be used to trigger an action.
It’ll take you time to get to grips with this file manager. But it might be perfect for you.
Search functionality is weak, parsing the output of the find utility.
Website: jjacky.com/donnatella
License: GNU General Public License v3 or any later version
12. Files (Elementary)
Files is a fork of Marlin, a retired file browser written in GTK 3 which implements Miller columns.
While we like the interface, this file manager has very poor search functionality.
The smart pathbar makes it easy to browse with breadcrumbs, search, or path completion. Quickly navigate with the column view and enjoy browser-class tabs with smart features like tab history.
Website: github.com/elementary/files
License: GNU General Public License v3.0
Next page: Page 5 – emelFM2, Gentoo, Rox-Filer
Pages in this article:
Page 1 – PCManFM, Files, Double Commander
Page 2 – GNOME Commander, 4Pane, Sunflower
Page 3 – SpaceFM, Thunar, Polo
Page 4 – Tux Commander, Donatella, Files (Elementary)
Page 5 – emelFM2, Gentoo, Rox-Filer
Page 6 – Memory comparison
Page 7 – Summary
Why no mention of Caja and Nemo?
They are mentioned…
Hi Steve. I think they deserve better than just “(and forks)”.
They do, that’s why they have a special mention in the section in question, not merely (and forks).
In general we don’t think it’s a great idea to fork actively maintained high quality software. It’s much better to contribute to the active project than fork.
I think Files (Nautilus) is awful compared to Caja and Nemo. Files has had many features ripped out.
And maybe in a future article you could cover non-GTK/non-QT window managers including XFE which uses the Fox widget library.
We’ve already covered XFE in File managers article, but there are other good non-GTK/non-QT file managers, so yes, we will.
Hey folks. Thanks for mentioning Sunflower. Development has been stale for a bit due to my personal life and work taking most of my free time. However in the background I’ve been preparing new release for a while now, which will be based on GTK+ 3.20. This release will have better and simpler interface but without removing any of the existing features. It will be much faster and better optimized.
If you need any help in testing your new release let us know. And when it’s ready, we’ll be happy to reevaluate.
my favorites are Thunar and Caja, even they’re not perfect. nowadays I’m more than a terminal based FM guy though, I use Midnight Commander a lot.