Pros & Cons of using Nautilus vs. Nemo vs. Thunar

General Help
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Sharing my experience. I've been comically and unfortunately stuck using Nautilus file manager for the past couple of days, because I was advised to purge my nemo and reinstall which opened a pandoras box of problems trying to reinstall nemo unfortunately. I understand though that problems are often the nature of linux and open source, its not smooth sailing often times, and its vastly time consuming. Maybe Ubuntu would be smoother running though.

--Nautilus,
Pros:
A.) When opening a folder with many files in it, you can edit files in it even before all files are loaded/thumbnails fully load, much quicker. Nemo wont do this, and wont let you quickly edit or cut/paste a file until all contents/thumbnails & order of the folder are fully loaded. A faster CPU can help with this.

Pro B.)right click menu does have 2nd tier/level drop down menu capability for quick tools.

Cons: A.) wont load trash can if many gigabytes in it. Literally wont even show "trash can" even in the favorites bar sometimes.

Con B.) Prone to crashing, just like Nemo, may be caused by Zorin 16, or having a low RAM/CPU computer, or another package interfering.

Con C.) doesnt have "Rename in place" AKA "inline naming" AKA double click rename file option.

Con D.) Cant quickly point at hard drive directory and see how much space is left in main drive.
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Nemo: Pros:
A.) DOES have "Rename in place" AKA "inline naming" AKA double click rename file option.

B.) right click menu does have 2nd tier/level drop down menu capability for quick tools.

CONS:
A.) When opening a folder with many files in it, you CANT edit files in it before all files are loaded/thumbnails fully load. Nautilus and Thunar(i think?) can do this, and will let you quickly edit or cut/paste a file even if all contents/thumbnails & order of the folder arent fully loaded. Nemo cant, very annoying. Imagine having to wait for the contents of a folder with 1000 files in it to load before you can paste or rename a single file.

B.) Prone to crashing, may be caused by Zorin 16, or having a low RAM/CPU computer, or another package interfering.
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--Thunar, cons:
Con A.) right click menu doesnt have 2nd tier/level drop down menus for quick tools.

Con: B.) Thunar doesnt have "Rename in place" AKA "inline naming" AKA double click rename file option.

Con C.) Sometimes is extremely slow and freezes for no reason. Maybe because I had 6GB in the trashcan??

1 Like
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This isn't supposed to happen, I never had this despite I filled it much. I don't understand why it wouldn't show up just because it contains many GBs. Deleting temporary files, setting an automatic cleaning or both might solve this. The automatic cleaning is recommended if you know that what you delete is no longer useful to you, otherwise better let them there until you view them again before deleting them permanently.

To me only Software Updater is sometimes crashing when I select updates or start installing them, Nautilus never did.

A fast renaming option is holding right click button on a file, moving the cursor to Rename… and releasing. Just to save 1 click :face_with_diagonal_mouth::smile:.

rybo said it :wink:. Otherwise enable Mounted disks in Zorin Appearance in Desktop section if you don't mind having a shortcut to it on your desktop. rybo's suggestion is probably the best and most simple if you want it to be limited to Nautilus.

Sorry, I can't say anything about the other 2, never used them :sweat_smile:.

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i used thunar before but had some issues ,cant remember what lol , swithed to PCManFM and so far works nice for my needs,no issues .
maybe try it and see ?

pcman
pcman1355×751 42.3 KB

pcman2
pcman21367×755 36.2 KB

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The problem I see here is changing default.

I understand not everything works perfectly and things can be changed for the better.

It isn't always the case for a lot of software.

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@rybo , thanks for pointing me to where I can see my partition space!

2.)

"Con C -- is actually a Pro for me. Give me that "rename" menu item any day. ha. My fault because I always activated the inline rename in Windows by mistake."

--But there should be an option for it.

Lastly, I forgot to mention that Nautilus wont accept links/URL's I drag to it from my web browser, but nemo will. Nemo wont accept it if i drag it to a USB folder for some reason though.

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@Luca_Pavan ,

" A fast renaming option is holding right click button on a file, moving the cursor to Rename"

--Double click is faster

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@14nd , thanks! never even heard of that file manager before!

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@Freeway , "The problem I see here is changing default."

No, its that Nautilus and Nemo have their own pros and cons.

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Technically it is not a double click.
It's a click + brief pause + another click. :grinning:

I prefer the F2.

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