File Manager Suggestions

[Quarall]

Gnome file manager lacks many of the features of Windows explorer but I was hoping/wondering if a few improvements could be made that would make it a better explorer alternative, some of these might already exist as Gnome extensions but I spent time trawling the Gnome extensions site and just couldn't find what I was looking for.

1.Windows has over 8 view modes for explorer whereas Gnome has 2 for its file manager, basically close to “Large Icons” and “Details”. I feel adding “List Mode” would fill the gap a bit as the rest are variations of the main three.

2. Save view mode per folder, sometimes you want any of the above for a particular folder, Windows automatically remembers this but Gnome does nothing and forces you to constantly toggle between them.

3. This PC, explorer has an excellent overview of all storage on the system in an organized and presentable manner, ideal if you have multiple drives like I do, the Gnome file manager seems designed for like 1-2 drives in the bottom left corner of its user interface. LxQT and Cinnamon have a crude This PC for example but no Linux UI has gotten this right like Windows has.

4. Shortcuts, one of the core features every windows user knows, again not supported by Gnome though this may be beyond a simple extension.

As a side note wouldn’t KDE be a better option as a base UI modified to the same way, it supports most of the above. There are KDE Win 11 skins so it is possible but a slick out of the box experience like with current AnduinOS would be nice.

Also a lot of cross platform Windows/Linux software uses the Qt framework, whereas GTK/Gnome apps are mostly Linux only, at least from my experience so a Qt based UI makes more sense for Windows users coming over (why Valve went with KDE for SteamOS).

[Anduin2017]

Switching AnduinOS to KDE is a huge work. Maybe fork it and build something like KanduinOS 😃

Do you want to try nemo?

sudo apt install nemo

I bet nemo is more powerful than nautilus.

[macdaddyaz20]

If you want to suggest improvements to Gnome Nautilus, it’s best to suggest these to the gnome team at https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/Design. Or install KDE as an alternating DE on your distro so you can choose which DE to boot into when you login.