The only drawback is getting it installed.
What Makes QtFM a Great Linux File Manager
Anyone using agraphical desktop environmentuses afile manager.
On Linux, there are lots to choose from.
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Choice is good, as long as the different offerings actually offer something different.
Most file managers, also called file browsers, do the same things.
They let you navigate the file system, and inspect or select files and directories.
it’s possible for you to copy and move files using drag and drop.
you could delete or rename files, and open files or run applications by clicking on them.
And because you don’t need to pop in in the command, you won’t mistype it.
You don’t need common, repetitive commands cluttering up your history.
Some distributions have QtFM packaged in their repositories, but many do not.
Surprisingly, neither Fedora nor Ubuntu do.
QtFM doesn’t do any of that, and no one else seems to have bothered, either.
Perhaps that’s because these formats inevitably introduce launch-time delays, and no one wants a laggy file manager.
Speed of launch is crucial.
A slow file manager would grow very old, very quickly.
The only other option you have isinstalling from source.
QtFM is written using theQt utility GUI toolkit.
It works with many different desktop environments.
The build instructions are given on theproject’s GitHub page.
As of January 2023, they didn’t work for us, after many attempts.
Perhaps the instructions need updating.
That means you might install it on any Arch-based distribution using your favorite AUR helper.
A list of locations and directories is displayed in a side pane on the left.
A single click selects a location.
The main panel displays files and directories located in the current location.
Double-clicking a directory in the main panel opens that directory.
The path to the currently viewed location is displayed.
On our test computer,GNOMEwas set to use dark mode, and QtFM automatically matched this.
QtFM has an option in Edit > parameters > Appearances but this didn’t have any effect.
On a different computer running EndeavourOS, light mode and dark mode worked as expected.
The list of locations in the side pane is pretty sparse to start with.
QtFM has four short menus.
Many of the menu actions are mapped to keyboard shortcuts.
These are the ones you’ll probably use the most.
By default this is set to open xterm, which is found on most Linux systems.
you might change this to openyour preferred terminal emulatorby accessing the “prefs” dialog from Edit > prefs.
Change the “Command” field for the “Terminal Emulator” entry in the “General” pane.
For GNOME, this will be “gnome-terminal.”
If you’ve installed a different terminal emulator, enter the command used to launch it.
These are commands that are applied to a file or directory.
When they are applied to files they are file-extension sensitive.
To create custom actions, navigate to Edit > configs > Custom Actions.
The existing custom actions are displayed.
An empty action is added to the bottom of the list.
Double-click one of the empty fields to edit it.
We’re going to set up a custom action to call thepandocdocument conversion utility to create anHMTLversion of aMarkdownfile.
Our field entries are:
tap the “Save” button when you have filled in the fields.
We have two files in our “~/Documents” directory.
One is a markdown file, the other is a LibreOffice document.
Right-clicking theODT fileproduces a context menu.
As we expect, the new custom action doesn’t appear.
The new action does appear in the context menu for the Markdown file.
If we pick the custom action,pandocis invoked and an HTML file is created called “draft.html.”
Related:Which Linux File System Should You Use?
