Being a relative newby I am currently using both these file managers and will probably end up just using Thunar but one issue that has me beat is the sort order of files in both apps and I have spent far too long trying to find what I am doing wrong.
As you all know on Apple and MS products the default sort order for files and folders is numbers first followed by letters after all numbers are listed. So far in Zorin the only sort order I can find is alphabetic only and this provides two issues for me. I am fairly sure this is purely a the idiot working the keyboard problem. As background I have over 12 tb of files consisting of hundreds, probably well over 1,000, files. Unfortunately Zorin folder and file properties. unlike windows, does not provide that detail but I use that info so rarely that I will seldom miss it.
Firstly a lot of the files I have are military documents which are identified by a number and date often followed by a one word description. Both Files and Thunar sort by this description so I now have directory contents sorted so that I have dozens of files called PN or AFM or AMM when what I need is that it consecutively shows all the files prefixed (for example) 01-60FFA-number.
Secondly to prioritize folders I have for 30+ years prefixed the important sub-folders in a folder with numbers. Often the least important files in a folder start with A and that is what both Files and Thunar prioritize and show first at present.
So after all that:
Can I change the file sort order to numbers first and letters after numbers, or
Do I need to change my file manager? or
Do I need to rename every numbered file? (if this is the answer I will have to do that in windows and I was hoping never to use that again)
Using Thunar, if I name files with a number first Thunar sorts by number, then alphabetically. Example naming convention:
1.1.Filename
1.2.Another-file
Real-world example. I save bank account statements as follows:
Visa.2025.07.pdf
Visa.2025.08.pdf
Access account statements named with the same convention sort in date order above Visa account statements.
Thunar sorts numeral characters ahead of alphabetic characters for me as well.
I'm also new to Linux/Zorin with dual-boot to Win 10. As a long time Windows user, MY adjustments to file manager sorting have been the following:
The little up/down arrows (in column headings) are reversed from Windows.
In Windows I used underscore as first character in folder or file name to make sure they sorted to very top (before letter or numbers). This doesn't work in Linux/Zorin but my workaround has been to insert a period as the second character.
Thank you all for your replies and my apologies for the very slow response. A "simple" medical problem of my wife's has turned into a very complex problem and is still taking a lot of time and energy.
I will comment that the solution was made much more difficult by one of the things that I think MS and Apple have right and Linux has totally messed up.
When I installed Thunar I found that I now had two file systems in parallel and both of them were named Files. Then I added Nemo and now had three programs named Files. If I had loaded these same programs in Windoze or Apple they would display as Nautilus and Thunar and Nemo, not Files and Files and Files and the non Linux way is infinitely more user friendly.
I ended up using Nemo as my file manager as it was the only one I could make use the ISO date format.