Introducing Nemo
Introduction
It was only a matter of time before we announced it, and the news was leaked in the press as soon as the project got on github: Cinnamon now has its own file browser called Nemo.
Nemo is a complete fork of Nautilus 3.4 and its goal is to extend the Cinnamon user experience to desktop and file management.
Why fork nautilus?
Short term: Nautilus 3.6 is a catastrophe. It removes features we consider requirements. We welcomed the news that Canonical decided to stick to Nautilus 3.4, but it came too late (we were already experimenting with Nemo) and it only temporarily solved the problem for Ubuntu and Linux Mint.
Long term: If we want to give ourselves the ability to implement our goals and to give people a great user experience, we need to broaden the scope of Cinnamon to all visible components of the desktops, file and desktop management being extremely central.
Nautilus was one of the best file browsers around. We’re saying “was” because we’re unanimous on the fact that Caja is a far superior browser than Nautilus. The trend continues with Nautilus 3.6 being, in our opinion, a lesser product than Nautilus 3.4. Many times, the question was risen as to whether or not Nautilus was the best file browser for Cinnamon. Why not use Caja instead (or Marlin, another really successful project)? And the answer is “integration”. Caja is developed by and for MATE, Nautilus is developed by and for GNOME, and under Cinnamon there’s a GNOME desktop. The file manager isn’t just a file browser, it defines how the user interacts with filesystems, documents, and the visible desktop. It’s a core part of any desktop and it’s important it properly integrates with it.
The long term goal for Cinnamon is to be exactly what we need it to be and that includes all desktops aspects of the user experience. As such, all visual layers of the desktop either get configured, patched, replaced or forked so that they properly integrate with Cinnamon. Underneath all that, GNOME should be less and less visible as the components which we find useful in it are not the ones exposed to the UI. It’s an approach similar to Xfce or LXDE. Cinnamon isn’t a standalone desktop environment but it fully aims at achieving proper integration.
KDE built Dolphin as a central piece of KDE. Xfce and LXDE rely on Thunar and PCManFM. Gnome is “adapting” Nautilus to what it wants it to be. MATE can rely on Caja and it’s probably only a matter of time before Unity gets its own file manager (patching/freezing Nautilus was the right decision but it’s only a good decision if it’s a temporary one, long term they’ll need to make their own file manager if they don’t want to chose between breaking Unity or Shell). Today, Cinnamon gets Nemo, and from now on that means you can get a better experience. First, it means you get all the features that have been missing in recent builds of Nautilus and you don’t get hit by the regressions coming from upstream, second, that means we can innovate on the desktop and file layers (not only with the panels and window management as we did until now), third it means you get a complete system where Cinnamon and Nemo work together, where your settings are in one place and where we can adapt Nemo to any crazy idea we have in Cinnamon and use it to enable it more advanced use cases and interactions.
What are the differences between Nautilus and Nemo?
There’s more and more difference with every single commit, but if you compare Nemo 1.0.0 with Nautilus 3.6 we can list the following:
- All the features Nautilus 3.4 had and which are missing in Nautilus 3.6 (all desktop icons, compact view, etc..)
- Open in terminal (this is part of Nemo itself)
- Open as root (this is also part of Nemo)
- File operations progress information (when you copy/move files you can see the percentage and info about the operation on the window title and so also in your window list)
- Proper GTK bookmarks management
- Full navigation options (back, forward, up, refresh)
- Ability to toggle between the path entry and the path breadcrumb widgets
- A lot more configuration options
Short term, it’s also likely to gain the following:
- A proper status bar
- A layout which is more similar to Caja, where the pathbar/path-entry field is below the main toolbar and only spans accross the view pane
- Configurable toolbar buttons for hidden features (view-selection, zoom levels…etc).
Long term we also want:
- An action API (which allows you to define context-menu actions by writing .desktop files and mapping extensions with open-with actions)
- Better widgets (we’re likely to learn from Marlin here)
- Better search (ala Firefox)
What does it look like?
It looks similar to Nautilus. At the moment the only visual differences are on the toolbar and the sidebar. The content pane and desktop layer look the same as before.
The most significant advantage Nautilus has over Nemo is that there are GTK themes customized for it. Nemo loses all of these customizations. Either themes will add proper Nemo support (we’re doing that with Mint-X for instance) or Nemo will adapt and regain compatibility with Nautilus themes (this is what we did in MDM for instance to regain compatibility with GDM themes).
At the moment, this is how Nemo looks with Elementary (note how the toolbar and the menu bar merge as if they were one single widget):
And this is how it looks with Mint-X (note the style of the sidebar):
Neither themes have proper Nemo support yet, but it’s only a matter of time before that happens.
Why call it “nemo”?
Gwendal Le Bihan named the project “nemo” after Jules Verne’s most famous character, who also happens to be the captain of the “Nautilus”. Who else than Nemo could take the Nautilus and veer towards a different direction?
And then there’s that orange clown-fish everybody’s seen on TV, the one that doesn’t tell jokes. I’m not sure Gwendal will ever manage to get the fish out of everybody’s head… but it’s a cool name, and whether we see a brilliant hero in it or a tiny little fish, whether we think “Giant Squid” or “P Sherman 42 Wallaby Way Sidney” it doesn’t really matter in the end.
It’s only 4 letters, and if it wasn’t for “open as root” being a core part of it, it would have made “gksu nemo &” very easy to type.
Will you still be able to use Nautilus with Cinnamon or will you need Nemo?
Yes. You can run any file manager with Cinnamon and if you don’t run Nemo we strongly suggest you take a look at Marlin and Caja.
Beware that Cinnamon and Nemo are meant to work together though. Right now there are components of Cinnamon which are tightly linked to Nautilus. These will be replaced by optional components which will tightly link to Nemo. So going forward, Cinnamon should work with any file browser, but it will have more features if you use Nemo.
To give you an example, you can currently define what desktop icons are visible in Cinnamon. Behind the curtain, that’s Cinnamon Settings exposing some Nautilus configuration. That is being removed (these options are gone in Nautilus 3.6 anyway, so there’s no real loss here for Nautilus users) and replaced with Cinnamon exposing some Nemo configuration, if and only if Nemo is installed. So if you’re using Caja you can set this in mintDesktop, if you’re using Marlin there’s probably options for it in Marlin, if you’re using Nemo it will be there in Cinnamon.
When it comes to packaging we’re aware that Cinnamon is used by many people and distributed by many distributions. Nemo won’t be a hard requirement, so it will be at the discretion of each distribution or user to decide whether or not they want/need Nemo and that shouldn’t impact on them using/distributing Cinnamon.
When is it coming?
Well that depends on your distribution. Nemo will have its first official release when Cinnamon 1.6 is out. It’s likely to be the default file browser in Linux Mint 14 Cinnamon Edition.
Congratulations to the developer team. Is it possible to add file preview feature on Nemo, similar KDE file manager?
There are thumbnails already, but if you mean something like sushi or a preview pane, yes, we could add both.
File preview with info section, as following link.
http://i.imgur.com/u5GQJ.png
Very nice. I see no reason not to add that in kelebek. I can’t tell you how long it will take (my intuition is very little since it’s already been done in Marlin/Sushi and we’ve got Dolphin too to learn from UI-wise… although we do intend to feature freeze for Cinnamon 1.6), but I’d like to see that added as well. Thanks for the detailed feedback.
Dolphin also do “preview” of music and video (rather built in player of them.)
Great news!
BTW: It would be nice, if you can add that Nemo will only copy one file at once, the rest will be queued. At the moment Nautilus copy all files simultaneously – if you add more than one – and this slows down the whole process.
Edit by Clem: glebihan mentioned that as well, when the two operations are on the same filesystem.
lol, that sound really stupid. Is there any case when it’s more efficient to try to copy all at once?
Btw Dolphin do dual view to, not looking like Krusader/MC/NC but still dual view, which is rather convenient, may also be a nice feature in case Nautilus doesn’t have that already.
Benno: It would be nice, if you can add that Nemo will only copy one file at once, the rest will be queued.
A huge +1!
Edit by Clem: glebihan mentioned that as well, when the two operations are on the same filesystem.
Hi Clem, does that mean you will be looking into coding a transfer queue for Nemo? As far as I am concerned, such a queue should do the following: a) automatically queue transfers if an already running transfer is using the same physical device or fs and start the transfer as soon as that device is no longer busy; b) add start/resume buttons for each transfer; c) let users rearrange the queue (up/down button) so that less important transfers can be moved to the end.
please add the option “add to XXX media player playlist” for audio & video files.
And also the queue management for file operation……….or atleast give an option to use ultracopier as default if installed.
And to use Guake terminal as defult instead of gnome-terminal
One hundred times this. Why file copying dialog is so dumb these days? Personally I like Total Copy (windows only). It allows you to queue and, gasp, pause your copy/move operations and even set a speed limit on it! How cool is that?
Congratulation. Can’t wait to see it in my LMDE + cinnamon !
Thank you Clem & all the team !
I would borrow the file filter from Dolphin, I find it very useful when browsing a long list of files. I link Mint in that they are there for what users want and not what is trendy albeit unpopular. Good work guys
Clem,…. This is great more power to the Mint team…but I have two litle wishes…..
Could u make a setting so Nemo would start with dual-pane default?
Doing F3 all the time gets a little bit tedious and I understand that not everybody like dual-panes… but when you make it a setting?
Secondly what about having a pause button in the File operations progress… A little bit like AHEM… Teracopy.
With these features Nemo will be even more powerfull…… (in mine opinion off course).
1. Not everyone uses that.
2. That would confuse new users.
That is one of the MOST PERSONAL only idea for any project I’ve ever seen.
A setting to start in dual-pane mode doesn’t seem unreasonable, does it? (I don’t use dual-pane mode myself, but can easily imagine that if you have to invoke it manually every time it would get a bit tedious) A “pause” button seems like a decent enough suggestion too, to be honest…
In that case I would suggest a config selection menu, like profiles where you can specify a default one, like gnome-terminal and mate-terminal do: https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-ovY9JrVo2jY/TsJrGzn8JpI/AAAAAAAADsw/zp-oFEeueGs/Screenshot%252Bat%252B2011-11-15%252B14%25253A36%25253A55.png
Yeah because a button showing two views is all too much?
1. If it is a setting like I suggested not everyone has to use it…
2. New user can use the default setting single pane without ever to bother about dual pane… again because its a setting=choice.
nothing personal about it …..
I’m new to Linux Mint (I keep up with Linux to stay as informed on different platforms as I can and I’m very unhappy with GNOME 3 and Unity) and I came across this blog post. I’m excited at the possibility of there being improvements made to Nautilus. While I’m not incredibly knowledgable about Linux/open source, and I am only a full-time Linux user when I’m in my office at one of my client locations, I haven’t noticed any improvements or changes to Nautilus, including some really annoying glitches, in years. In fact, it seems as if the flexibility and power options are disappearing.
I wanted to take the time to reply to this comment because I think there might be the potential for compromise. While I agree that a two-paned view by default might be confusing (or at the least, overkill and a waste of space) for most users, I would like to suggest an idea that might make everyone (or at least everyone in this thread) happy.
Since the ability to split a Nautilus/Nemo window as dual-paned already exists, just allow this capability (dual-pane view) to be activated as an option or preference, either:
- as a checkbox in Nautilus/Nemo’s settings labeled “Split windows into dual-panes”
OR
- as an item in the ‘View’ menu labeled “Split window into dual-panes” that can be toggled off and on (a checkmark will display next to “Split window into dual-panes” when that setting is active). The F3 key (or whatever the proper keyboard shortcut is) will toggle this setting off and on.
** Only one of these should be implemented in order to eliminate redundant options that have no reason to be located in more than one location. I’m partial to the setting being stored in the “View” menu since that’s where other changes to window view are made. If I knew this capability existed, but I didn’t know how to enable it, the “View” menu would be the first place I’d look since I’m adjusting the view.” **
Dual-pane view should always be disabled by default (after a fresh install or when a new user account is created, but once the setting is enabled it should stay enabled until the user explicitly turns it off. For example, if I enable dual-pane view by pressing F3 or toggling the setting on in the “View” menu, any new windows that I open during that session will open with dual-pane view enabled. If I exit Nautilus/Nemo and re-open it, or if I restart my computer and open Nautilus/Nemo when I login, that setting should still be active and all windows will open with dual-pane view enabled.
I can think of a situation where this would be very, very useful: copying files across machines or shares on a network. I’d want the file server’s share to be open on the left side and the folder on my local machine open on the right. Instead of copy/cut and pasting, or dragging from one window to another, I can just drag them from one pane to another. This is very much like most modern FTP clients behave. It could also be useful to move files between locations on your machine — especially if you’re using a netbook or tablet or have a small display — since you’d only have to focus on one window.
I hope I’m not out of place suggesting something like this (or at all) since this is my first time to this blog, and my first time looking at Linux Mint, but I had my FTP client open in the background while I was reading this blog post (Transmit on Mac OS X) and the answer to the situation was literally right in front of me!
Some additional thoughts/notes:
** I think the only sensible behavior for the single/dual-pane setting is for it to be global — either enabled for all windows or disabled for all windows. It’s convenient to configure a folder to be always be viewed a certain way without changing your system-wide view options. For example, all of the folders on my machine open in icon view (48×48) with the contents organized by file type except my ~/Downloads folder which always opens in list view with the contents organized by the date added. A dual-pane window would be able to accommodate this since I could have my ~/Documents folder open in the left pane in an icon view and my ~/Downloads folder open in the right pane in list view. If the single/dual-pane setting applied to specific folders, what would happen if I toggled back to single-pane view, opened my ~/Pictures directory, and then navigated around until I came back to my ~/Documents folder? Would my file browser immediately jump back to dual-pane view and open the ~/Downloads folder in the right pane? That would be ridiculous and annoying.
** Though it would be additional work (but something that could be saved as a feature for a minor update/upgrade), it’d be nice to have specific keyboard shortcuts available in dual-pane view that does things like “create new folder in left pane,” “rename folder in right pane,” or “cut from left pane and paste in right pane.” This would allow some really efficient keyboard navigation with a GUI file browser that isn’t possible with multiple windows open. Maybe add a modifier key, similar to Mac OS X, where Control + X in single-pane view is “Cut” (and in dual-pane view “Cuts” the selection in whichever pane that is active), but Left Alt + Control + X you will “Cut” the files selected in the left pane (regardless if that pane is active/focused or not) and Right Alt + Control + X will “Cut” the files in the right pane. To do a simple cut and paste between panes you’d press Left Alt + Control + X and then Right Alt + Control + V.
** I originally thought that In dual-pane mode, the progress of any file activity between the two panes (like a transfer from a server open in the left pane to a local folder open in the right pane) would appear in the status bar (similar to the status bar of a web browser) at the bottom of the Nautilus/Nemo window as a nice progress bar that would fill with a color (matching the current theme/system color scheme…. maybe the same color of highlighted objects) from left to right to illustrate progress along with statistics (45 of 50 files copied) and the transfer rate & time remaining (10.0Mbps – 1 minute remaining). Since you’re focusing on one window for all of your file management tasks, it’d be kind of jarring to spawn a separate dialog box which would steal keyboard focus from the file browser and get in the way if you’re using a netbook or have the file browser window maximized.
A few things I’m not sure of:
-would be the contents of the status bar be centered with the operation status aligned to the left, the progress bar centered, and transfer rate & time remaining aligned to the right or if there would be a more aesthetically pleasing layout.
- would the file operation only appear in the status bar when dual-pane view is enabled — what if dual-pane view is enabled but the transfer is between a folder open in the left pane of Windows A and a folder open in the right pane of Window B? would a dialog box appear because this is not an operation between the two panes in a single window? would the operation appear in the status bar of both windows?
– if this behavior is implemented, the operation should probably always appear in the status bar regardless of whether single-pane or dual-pane view is enabled and how many windows are open.
- another possibility is to display a normal file transfer dialog and if the user intentionally suppresses/closes the file transfer dialog the operation then appears in the status bar. if there are multiple operations in progress, a button should appear that will expand a pop-up list that will display the pending operations (similar to the way Google Chrome’s download notifications appear).
Sorry for rambling on and on…. I guess I had an idea and just kept refining it as I was typing. Anyway, I hope it’s alright for me to offer a suggestion. I look forward to getting more involved with Linux Mint since the future of this distro (and the focus on improving user experience and attention given to the users) looks much more promising than Ubuntu and Unity.
I would also quote +1 the request for having a preference to start it up with 2 panes …
Hi Cinnamon guys,
Great job on the fork. I have this installed in my Quantal VM via the nightly PPA and it’s lovely.
I know this isn’t the right place to raise this, but I can’t find anywhere else right now, but could you add a little something to nemo?
When a user makes the icons bigger via various zoom options, the space between the icons grows too. I was wondering if it’s possible to create an option where the gap can be fixed? This could stop nemo from being too ugly when icons are scaled up.
Cinnamon seems to be evolving amazingly, and Nemo seems to be a great product.
Could I suggest that you guys create a donation page for Cinnamon?
I am aware that it’s mostly Mint devs that are working on Cinnamon but maybe you guys should try to make autonomize the finantial support of Cinnamon since it’s growing to be an alternative to Xfce, LXDE, Gnome Shell in the GTK environment.
Edit by Clem: I appreciate this, but Cinnamon is run as any other Mint project. Technically it’s completely independent from the distribution. Project-wise it’s a sub-project under the same organization, just like MDM, Nemo, mintInstall, live-installer etc etc…
I would love it if some file manager took up the only thing that’s a good experience in Windows (Vista & 7): single click navigation of the file system. It was years ago I decided that if the web can be navigated with single clicks there is no reason file systems can’t – and it is definitely so. Except for selections.
Windows has a really great system with checkboxes both in icon and list mode that works really well to avoid complicated rubberbanding (whicle simple rubberbanding still works). Checkboxes appear on hover (and when selected).
Far as I remember Nautilus even put this on a TODO at one point or the other but never actually did it (lack of time or forgot
).
Oh, and don’t know if this is still true since I’m still on lucid(!) but Nautilus froze the whole UI when waiting for slow or waking up disks (esp. USB drives) *even* when not anywhere close to that part of the tree. As in, clicking the ~/Music folder freezes the whole UI while a disk under /media/MyBook for some reason must be woken. a) it does not. b) still no reason to freeze any other part of the file system view.
Just my very short wishlist!
“Windows has a really great system with checkboxes both in icon and list mode that works really well to avoid complicated rubberbanding”
No need to go that far as Windows platform, KDE’s Dolphin has this for ages
How about an undo button?
Edit by Clem: I’m not sure Colin. That’s a View-Edit action, like copy and paste… it’s cool in an editor, but I don’t know about a file browser. It’s great that you can undo, but does it need to be there in the toolbar? I suppose, if it’s configurable and disabled by default, why not after all.
First things first, thank you, thank you, thank you Clem (and everybody else at MINT’s), even if i’m not on MINT anymore (I’m archlinux user’s now, but with Cinnamon !) i would like to give my appreciation for your work.
I do not want to upset nobody but i think Clem’s way of doing things (nicely, well done, and with no will to reinvent the wheel…) is like Our way( I mean We Linux Users). Cinnamon is very young but still…is a real diamond!
I loved nautilus a lot but i don’t like where gnome guys are aheaded with it. Simplicity can be good… Unefficiency no.
Thumbs up for one of the best linux team around… The Mint Guys!!
Clem, I think you can get some great ideas from the new “Windows Explorer”. IMHO it is the only good thing in Windows 8. Here are some blog posts showing new interesting features:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/08/23/improving-our-file-management-basics-copy-move-rename-and-delete.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/08/26/designing-the-windows-8-file-name-collision-experience.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/08/29/improvements-in-windows-explorer.aspx
Edit by Clem: Thanks.
Hi Clem, congrats on bringing sanity to Nautilus. Are you working with Ikey, or is this a separate activity?
While you are in there, would there be value in merging the UI changes that went into the Elementary patches (Nautilus 2.x)?
Another wish for your list of long-term goals: support for tools like Subversion and git – so we could finally have something Tortoise-like on Linux.
Yes integrated git support would be very nice and so useful.
Second, Third and fourth this! I use RabbitVCS under Nautilus on Mint 12 (work PC, will do Mint 13 (or 14?) update during my christmas holiday break. My question was going to be “Will add-ons like RabbitVCS work with Nemo directly?”, but I’d be happy to see native SVN integration as well.
No they won’t. But it’s trivial to port Nautilus extensions to Nemo, we ported Dropbox and File Roller extensions today: http://github.com/linuxmint. We’ll port more and more extensions as we go along and we’ll create new ones for use cases which are missing them.
will it also be available for ubuntu users? thanks for forking ..
Edit by Clem: Of course, everything we do is available to the entire community. In the case of Ubuntu we’re even package-compatible.
I’ve been secretly hoping you’d fork Nautilus for quite some time now
Are there plans to bring back the “open with custom command” feature from Nautilus 2 (Caja probably still has it, Thunar as well).
Thanks a lot for your awesome work!
Edit by Clem: Well, that’s not the solution we have in mind, but we’re definitely going to fix the problem. We want to revamp the way you define mimetype handling and let you define action directly via text files.
@Shred
RabbitVCS is actually a decent alternative to Tortoise.
But it will probably take a while before we see Nemo support (it was the same with Caja). It will probably be the one thing I miss the most.
@veggen: Thanks for the RabbitVCN hint. Yes, this is quite what I am looking for. Last time I checked, I only found a set of Nautilus scripts which were actually not quite useful.
Hi Clem, i like the work you’re doing with Cinnamon. To be honest i used to be a fan of Gnome (and one of those who still miss Gnome2) and i decide to give it a chance to Gnome3 once it made it’s appearance, at first was hard but i tried to get acquainted with success at first, but with no avail the more Gnome made the improvements
When i met Cinnamon (was in Mint 12) i used it instead of MGSE since it crashes less (not meant to be rude) and i like the work you made to it and since then, i used it in EVERY LINUX OS I CAN (right now i’m using it in Fedora and the proper Mint). I don’t like Unity (or at least some parts of it) so i decided to remain with you. I hope that you can make Nemo a great part of Cinnamon as well
My wish and opinions to Nemo (take it as long term or short term, as you wish):
Add support to Git and others like SVN, Mercurial and so on (as @Shred says)
Make able to edit some tags from MP3/OGG/other music files like Window does (not a great example i know but it’s the only one i got for now)
Add an “open file location” to be able to find the file (maybe something extra to the Firefox-like search)
A little preview to images and other files (i saw a Nautilus patch that was able to do that but i can’t remember the name right now)
Hope you can keep the good work on it =) (Y)…
Sorry to report the bug here, but since I use Cinnamon on ArchLinux instead of Linux Mint, I can’t report it in the traditional way. When Nemo controls the desktop instead of Nautilus, the theme is not respected and the text appears as dark gray instead of the theme’s color (e.g. white). Is it intentional?
Edit by Clem: That’s because your theme defines styles for nautilus and not for nemo. What you can do is look at how it does it and add the same styles defined for Nautilus for Nemo (search/replace the Nautilus keywords with Nemo basically).
I made a theme that works on latest Cinnamon/Nemo/Ubuntu/GTK 3.6
It’s beautiful theme with highly customizable color scheme
http://www.fandigital.com/2012/08/zoncolor-elegant-theme-your-own-color.html
Nemo screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/uVSIA.png
Edit by Clem: Great work! Customizable color schemes is something we want to add to cinnamon themes in 1.8. MATE/GTK2 and KDE have it already, we should be able to achieve it as well.
I know it probably a difficult question right now but will you be able to install nautilus and nemo together, I use Dropbox which has nautilus as a dependency. And also will there ever be a default windows theme to match the default cinnamon theme, the mintx window theme looks great with mate but I wish there was a dark one to match cinnamon, at the moment I’m using shiki easy metacity from the Ubuntu repository, works ok.
Edit by Clem: Yes, for instance here on my box I have Nemo, Nautilus and Caja. I’m not sure how we’ll implement dropbox in nemo. Either we’ll provide an extension to nemo or we’ll make nemo handle it directly. Note that dropbox is a Mint package… it depends on “nautilus-dropbox | caja-dropbox”.
Would you consider using Thunar?
Edit by Clem: We did already, I explained that.
You also left out Nautilus 3.6 kills the useful the feature to remember the settings on a per folder basis. So you have to manually set them each time you open the folder.
These settings cover whether you want to view the folder in icon view or details view (or compact), the zoom level for the folder and how it is sorted.
Any chance for sizing directories (remote or local) so one could sort directory content by size? I imagine this would be most useful for identifying large files and subdirectories that occupy a lot of space, and either moving that data or deleting it to free up space?
GNOME 3 was (and continues to be, with each new release) a big step backwards. I think the Nemo file manager should be modeled around the Nautilus Elementary design.
Hi.. congratulations and thanks.
But there is already nemo file manager (i think death project anyway) :
http://www.iola.dk/nemo/
http://git.gnome.org/browse/nemo/
I dont know about license or .deb packaging, posting this just to make sure if this will not make any software name trouble / packaging conflict.
What about in “computer”, will you guys show the remaining disk space and maybe other informations? or maybe on the sidebar on hover? I find this odd that only windows explorer has this feature in the computer summary area.
Been wishing this for years.
anyway good job so far !
Great job in looking out for the community as usual Mint team. <3
Here my simple idea/suggestion for Nemo: a right-click move file to collapsible system
What do I mean?
I'm particularly imagining the functionality of how the Firefox plugin 'Save File To' works (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/save-file-to/), but in this case made for the Move file/Copy file feature…so it'd be simple to have a file anywhere, right-click, move/copy to and then surf to the new destination in the expanding tree
Just a thought.
Thanks again everybody!
Thank you Clem & all the team! Congratulations, you’re doing a great job! I cant wait on new Cinnamon & Mate!
I was wondering have you ever think about the idea of having multiple side panes in file brownser – similair to SpaceFM – as an additional option?
http://sourceforge.net/projects/spacefm/
Thanks! I wish you all the best!
Some suggestions for usability of filemanager software:
- sidebar must be easy to toggle open/close. So, button for toggle with mouse, and “easy” and “common/standard” keyboard shortcut. When filemanager window is in fullscreen mode, is also very useful the “border swither” as in Opera browser (a some-pixel-wide extra slim, full high vertical toggle button that open/close the sidebar): you move mouse at left border of the screen and click to toggle. Is extremely easy and fast.
- It must also be extremely easy and fast to resize sidebar and the entire filemanager window by mouse. So, NO narrow-invisible-idiot-unusable borders for only fucked “look” reason. First of all a filemanager, must be comfortable. Second must be comfortable, and third must be comfortable. :-p
No useful at all to see content of sidebar during resize (with icons/texts that fliker and move around the window to occupy the space… it’s only CPU waste for redrawing): a simple line to mark the position is a clean solution, with final redraw of the window.
- Easy way (no drop down, no menus) to toggle with mouse between views (icons, list) in main window, as Marlin with his 3 buttons list-icons-details. The same for change view/contents of sidebar (tree, places….): 3/more buttons.
- to change between “button style” and “text-style” in path bar I think is a good idea simply click in the blank space at the right of path-buttons, as in Windows 7. Esc to come back from “text” to “buttons”.
Thanks for you attention.
I can not begin to express how happy I am that you are forking Nautilus. It seems these days that most developers are trying to dumb down everything so that it can work in a mobile/touch environment. While that is great for a tablet or phone, it just doesn’t work for a full PC desktop. I am very glad to see Clem that you, and your team are working hard to preserve the full desktop experience.
Hello.
I’m “new” on linux… just a year or so… This discussion about file managers reminds me one of three programs I really miss on linux: TotalCommander.
I know Ghisler won’t port it to linux, he already signed that… But I haven’t found a linux file manager capable of half of what TC does 5 or 6 years ago. That’s why I ended up installing Wine and TC. It’s quite slower, but it still covers most of my needs. I use Midnight Commander for terminal, of course…
Well… About Nemo: an OPTION to set up a DUAL PANEL layout would be most welcomed, and the queued file operations (TC does that ince v3… O:) ) would be just great… I’m tired of having to WAIT for a networked file or a CD/DVD/USB file to be copied to start copying another from or to the device (another directory, i.e.). No, I can’t always select all the files I need to copy in one big mouse movement. Or copy those, move theese ones, delete that there… oh, I forgot to move you, too… With TotalCommander I can queue all these operations in a list, and even cancel an item of the list while still performing others. So, if the ETA is 6 min., I can go to the kitchen and make some coffee…
It’s not just visual.. It’s a (IMHO) very efficient feature.
And thanks, Clem, becouase you guys are always putting the user experience on the top of the list.
Let me second your request for queued file operations, when moving large amounts of files over several hard drives, I have often missed that! Considering LM’s affinity for user input, Nemo might finally pull together all my favorite features from different file managers! =D
“that means we can innovate on the desktop and file layers”
I hope you will – that you will not simply freeze Nautilus 3.4 in time and hope to maintain it that way indefinitely.
Btw, and this is my personal opinion of course, Nautilus was never that great – compared to Dolphin in particular.
Now that we have an opportunity to make Nemo much better Nautilus ever was there is one particular feature that I would like to see added.
Konqueror has a a feature where you can filter out files by specifying wildcards on the location bar.
Example:
/home/User/*.txt will shows all the text files in the user’s home directory
/home/User/a* will shows all the files styarting with “a” in the user’s home directory.
I would love to see this feature added to Nemo. It make system addministration much easier especially when you have scenarios where you deal with large amounts of files
wee wil can use it on Sabayon? or only on Mint
Hi,
Is it possible to show the path as a text field with auto-completion? I do dislike buttons for this task.
TIA
Way to go, Clem & team.
I agree with what some colleagues said about file preview window and info. That’s the reason so many people remain in Mint:
its developers listen to the users instead of leading them to wherever they think appeals to them or to non-desktop users.
Thank God – an intelligent file manager.
This is amazing, I can’t wait to use it.
When I saw “open as root” on the list of features I admit I let out a little squeal of happiness…
Yes, I did just realize that the “open as administrator” option was already in nautilus -.-’
Still, the rest looks awesome
Some suggestions for usability of filemanager software:
- sidebar must be easy to toggle open/close. So, button for toggle with mouse, and “easy” and “common/standard” keyboard shortcut. When filemanager window is in fullscreen mode, is also very useful the “border swither” as in Opera browser (a some-pixel-wide extra slim, full high vertical toggle button that open/close the sidebar): you move mouse at left border of the screen and click to toggle. Is extremely easy and fast.
- It must also be extremely easy and fast to resize sidebar and the entire filemanager window by mouse. So, NO narrow-invisible-idiot-unusable borders for only fucked “look” reason. First of all a filemanager, must be comfortable. Second must be comfortable, and third must be comfortable. :-p
No useful at all to see content of sidebar during resize (with icons/texts that fliker and move around the window to occupy the space… it’s only CPU waste for redrawing): a simple line to mark the position is a clean solution, with final redraw of the window.
- Easy way (no drop down, no menus) to toggle with mouse between views (icons, list) in main window, as Marlin with his 3 buttons list-icons-details. The same for change view/contents of sidebar (tree, places….): 3/more buttons.
- to change between “button style” and “text-style” in path bar I think is a good idea simply click in the blank space at the right of path-buttons, as in Windows 7. Esc to come back from “text” to “buttons”.
Thanks for you attention.
Good news. I wasn’t satisfied with Nautilus, Gnome Commander, Double Commander… I found Krusader to be the best for me.
I hope to see here:
* DUAL PANE which can be made permanent with multiple folder TABS and folder BOOKMARKS; (similar to SoloID)
* right click: OPEN WITH + remember open with + user actions (edit as root..); (asked also by veggen)
* “open file LOCATION” to be able to find the file + “copy file LOCATION” to copy path; (similar to Sam Burgos)
* copy/cut with sudo + sudo password on copy/cut permission error for file manipulation in GUI;
Clem, what if we download Nautilus 3.4 and block it from being updated? We can keep it as a deb package or tar.gz in one of our folders, can’t we? And use it in any distro we use, so we could uninstall nautilus 3.6 and install 3.4 and block it from updating?
Nemo is a fork of Nautilus 3.4, meaning it has a major part of 3.4 and you have placed it in Mint repos and sort of blocked it from being updated by any updater manager from Nautilus. Am I right? If there is any updates, it would be from Mint repos, so in other words, Nautilus 3.4 is frozen and rebarnded, or have you added some special features?
Have a good day!
Clem,
It’s wonderful that this:
—–Configurable toolbar buttons for hidden features (view-selection, zoom levels…etc—-
is being included with Nemo eventually. This is very important to me and makes things flow so much easier than having to access the View Menu each time you wish to change things.
Thanks for allowing this to be included.
I am using Nemo 1.0.0 now and it’s pretty nice the way you can configure the toolbar options in preferences.
Have you ever thought of including an option to double click a blank space in the file manager window and have it go back to the last folder viewed? This would save a lot of people a lot of time and, I think, add great functionality.
It would also save a user having to go back up to the back button or the parent folder icon on the taskbar or hit backspace each time you wished to go back a folder.
Of course, I have no idea how hard or how much time it would take to code something like that. It’s just my layman wishes.
an integrated terminal would be awesome, that can be opened/closed with the click of a button, like this one http://www.ubuntuka.com/static.images/nautilus-terminal.png
I would love to see this feature
Whilst I still haven’t really spent much time with Cinnamon, I am spending so much time getting frustrated by the Windows 7 version of Explorer that I feel compelled to write a quick request here.
Nemo sounds great from your post and I look forward to using it when Mint 14 Cinnamon is released. The thing I hate most about Windows Explorer is that it tries to remember folder settings for the last x hundred folders viewed. To me, this is one of the worst design mistakes in the world (esp. in Windows 7 where you can do very little about it) and I just want to say that I hope you guys are sensible enough to not do that in Nemo. If you do, at the very least have an option to turn it off and always default to the last view used by the user. Ordering, display style (details ordered by name or date modified seem most useful in a file manager) should be preserved.
Sorry if this is how it already works (seems to be like this in Nautilus)… I’ve really been going crazy using Windows 7 at work and coming up against annoying problems like this in literally every file dialogue I see.
Btw, the folder tree view that is an option in Windows is very handy – will there be such view in Nemo? The split pane in Nautilus doesn’t really do it for me and I haven’t seen anything similar to the windows folder tree view.
Andy, I don’t have either Nautilus or Nemo installed now, but shouldn’t the “Details” view be equivalent to the tree view in W7?
I’m using Caja atm because I like it more than the new Nautilus.
But I think I want ot change to Nemo once it’s out. Do I need to remove Caja first to have no problems?
Will I be able to drag and drop a folder on the left panel with Nemo? That’s my main concern with Nautilus as I like to have a quick link to my most used folders. (In general will I be able to configure the left panel to my wishes?)
Can’t wait for Cinnamon 1.6.
I love Mint developers
They had successful solutions. Can’t wait for new Cinnamon.
Nemo Looks good. But i want only one feauture from nautilus 3.5 – hide menubar to one button or hide/show it by alt-key. I think, menubar is annoying thing.
Edit by Clem: It’s removable in Nemo as well (although I personally wouldn’t live without it)
For GOD’S SAKE PLEASE INCLUDE AN UNDO BUTTON even if limtied to the last 3 actions IN THE BROWSER. IT’s BEEN YEARS AND this is one huge lacking feature in all browsers!
Someone one made one as an extension and posted it on the Ubuntu Forums but the Natuilus devs never implemented upstream so it eventually lost compatibility. It’d be nice to have an UNDO button though seriously.
Caja has that buuton.
Sry not button but option.
Great news!
My only feature request: make it a copy of TotalCommander.
awsome but plz make a pause button for copy it be awsome if u do that just like dophin,i am desperatly looking for a pause copy tool kit one that is not only in kde like dolpins’s and good luck will be rooting for u
I would like to see only this one feature on Nemo :
* Able to show more than 1000 files in one folder very fast.
Well I have try some popular file manager on linux, but only one which have that feature. it’s Rox-filer. But I’d like to see it on Nemo.
notes : 1000 files type was text files with 2 to 5 kb size only.
Great job!
What I would really like is a finder like view with the screen divided in sections with the subfolders… I think it’s one of the few thins I envy to mac users!
Yes, this would be very useful. According to this I would welcome the navigation through the filessystem with arrow-keys.
I allways use and miss the option for firm and verify files and of course change the background similar to konqueror 3
I hope I could try it on Debian and I´ll apreciate so much verify/sign a file option and change the background, like in Konqueror 3.x.
Thanks a lot for your job and time!
These are good news, thanks for your work!
My wishlist for Nemo compared to current Nautilus (v3.2.1) in LMDE would be (in descending priority):
1. No UI freeze when an USB disk is waking up slowly
2. Copy only one file at once, at least to the same device. A Pause-Continue Button for each copy job is also okay.
3. Do not close a panel when unmounting a device invalidates the current directory (go to valid parent instead)
4. Option to start in dual-pane mode
5. Other cool stuff
The problems from 1. and 2. are really annonying, so I am really happy if only this two could be fixed.
I think point 3 was not mentioned in the other postings so far.
Can you add new feature for Nemo? I use linux and windows. Windows explorer file manager is much better then what nautilus can offer now. I have to work daily whit images and now nautilus will not allow me sort images by dimensions. Also checking images resolution is slow. I have to open image and check: “What is this image dimensions?”. Windows explorer offers me this information and I don’t have to open image. I just select it and I can see what type of image it is and “Dimensions: 640×380″.
Sorry about grammar, I’m a bit busy now…
Hi Clem ! Well, at first, I tend to think forking is a mistake. However, there are quite a few obvious and important long-standing bugs that look like they would never be fixed in the main Nautilus branch.
For instance :
- there a a LOT de space wasted since they changed the default icon size from 96 to 64. It’s very strange : the grid size is the same, but the icons are smaller so there are huge blank spaces. It’s even worse when using higher zoom values.
- when a file is downloaded to the Desktop folder, Nautilus tries to generate the thumbnail before the download is actually complete. Then, you have to manually delete the ~/.thumbnails/fail/xxx file if you want to force the creation of the thumbnails. This is annoying as one frequently have many PDF / videos with missing thumbs on the desktop.
- the compact view (which is apparently removed in Nautilus 3.6) has a bug : it doesn’t respect the “default zoom value”.
- the search function doesn’t work if Nautilus is built against libtracker and if tracker is not enabled. And it doesn’t search within directories which are not indexed.
I guess all those are much more important than any bold innovation.
Apart from that, Peter Penz, the main Dolphin developer, recently gave up development. Many features in Dolphin are extremely advanced and cool : easy way to add metadata/semantic desktop etc, preview of the content of a directory in the directory icon, display of files meta data below the icon depending on the zoom value, etc.
Sorry for annoying you with all those remarks (especially since I don’t help myself !),
thanks for your work. Even if I tend to doubt some choices you make, I think overall the vision / whole picture is very sensible.
Hi,
To be honest i dont see the point of developing a new file browser/manager with polished functionality of already existent file managers, there are more then few out there to choose from.
Unless the aim is to make a real file manager like Krusader, cause Krusader does not have a true alternative. A good Total Commander counterpart for linux would be the right direction.
Just a observation not a negative criticism.
P.S. LMDE+MATE rocks
For distant approximation to Total Commander check out Double Commander http://doublecmd.sourceforge.net/
The best so far for linux i could find.
There is a need for a new file browser/manager. Krusader the best, but it’s for KDE. Please read my requests.
Hi!
On Ubuntu 12.04 64-bit I’ve installed Cinnamon and Nemo from
ppa:gwendal-lebihan-dev/cinnamon-nightly
It seems that Nemo (v. 1.0.0) does not provide the Compress command in the contextual menu which opens by right-clicking a file/directory. This is currently available in Nautilus (v. 3.4.2).
Is there a way to add the Compress command in Nemo?
– rpr.
I see this solved in Nemo 1.0.3. Thank you very much!
First of all, I think it’s quite a good idea to try to get everything integrated into a smooth desktop experience (that’s why I switched to cinnamon).
Concerning nemo: If I get it right, there will be a way to switch to breadcrumb mode and copy the current path like in dolphin? If so this would be great, as I`m really missing this feature.
Switching to root mode will be nice especially for less experienced users.
But one thing I don`t get is: Why is the navigation on the left side white on the first screeenshot? In my opinion it should stay gray as it is in nautilus as it belongs to the menu rather than to the main presentation area where your current location and it`s folders are displayed.
A feature I miss badly in Nautilus is REGEX SEARCH option.
Also, it would be nice to have some sort of batch-renaming a la GPrename, although I agree that it would be almost beyond regular file management scope.
Hi Clem,
Not sure if this has been done yet or if this is the right place to post this, i’ve been wondering if it would be possible to add the option of remembering window size and position for all applications as a centrally configured feature in cinnamon?
It would be great if such a feature can be added!!
Thanks and keep up the hard work!!
Developers wanting to improve the GTK file browsers should really look at dolphin for inspiration. It’s far more custmisable and it allows you to use several panels together in the sidebar. you can also have an integrated terminal that follows the active directory. file previews are also pretty nice.
Hi Guys,
Thanks for the new things, I wish we could make it easier to create an ssh-connection to another PC and copy files from one PC to another in the field. I visit many customers and have to use SCP or SSH commands. Even MC I’m still using a lot, since Nautilus I cannot connect to another PC (e.g. cash register in a restaurant).
Next to this, the hidden slider is not friendly for touch screens. Please consider some people who have no keyboard or mouse, just a touch screen. Nemo should be possible for touch screens.
Thanks in advance,
Bart Houkes
p.s. still using Linux 11 since version 12 and version 13 are not compatible for my touch-screens. I would like to have version 14 working on my touch-screen again…
I’m really liking what I’ve seen of Nemo so far, but further to Robert P’s comment upthread, I’m not getting Extract Here in the context menu for compressed files either – is this a deliberate decision, or a problem of running Cinnamon on Ubuntu?
Edit by Clem: Hi, it’s part of file-roller and it wasn’t ported to Nemo yet. We’ll definitely add it in though, along with other common extensions.
Reference Shred’s comment – we had Tortoise on Linux, and I still do. It’s the main reason I haven’t moved from Gnome 2.x
Will
Maybe the bug that allows icons to overlap will dissapear in this fork
Hopefully, F. 
Unless I’m missing it, I can’t see a “Send to…” in Nemo. In Nautilus 3.4.2 that exists and is necessary for sending linked files to an external USB (FAT) device (Send to|Removable disks and shares). A simple copy fails because “Filesystem does not support symbolic links’.
So Nemo needs something similar (or some option of copying the source file rather than just the link).
“Nemo is a complete fork of Nautilus 3.4″
Except that with Nautilus (3.4.2) I was able to copy/move files and/or folders to a bookmark, but Nemo apparently doesn’t have that functionality…? Am I missing a config option somewhere?
This is a major PITA, to say the least; went back to Nautilus for now.
Edit by Clem: By complete fork we mean that the two projects won’t merge, they’re going in different directions. Bookmarks management was changed in Nemo because we didn’t like the way it worked in Nautilus. We’ll reintroduce bookmarks in copy/move-to context menus though, it’s only a matter of time before that happens.
I think nautilus fork is great. Its high time nautilus’s development direction changed. It was seriously going nowhere. NO new (that matter) features were being added and new users’ requests were being incorporated.
I hope with this even desktop managements improves. A features that has been long missing from nautilus. Desktop icons spacing, grid and all are not at all smooth. There has been no preview feature in nautilus for years now. Open file too doesn’t have a preview feature for images and stuff.
Again, congratulation on the hard work.
I can’t seem to open more than one folder with ‘Other Application’
eg. select two music folders and open with VLC
Awesome news!
Another great file manager for GNU/LInux is emerging! I can’t wait.
Nautilus pre-3.6 was great, but it wasn’t as featureful as KDE’s Dolphin, or as minimalistic as Xfce’s Thunar or LXDE’s PCManFM.
MATE’s Caja is currently the best Nautilus clone (or more precisely said: inheritor), and it works mostly without errors and bugs.
Nemo could be the next big thing after KDE’s Dolphin and M$ Windows’ Windows Explorer, since GNU/Linux’s GNOME-based DEs (desktop environments) really lacked good updates to Nautilus (not feature regressions as is the case with Nautilus v3.6…).
Here are a few ideas/suggestions for Nemo from me (I was looking at Caja v1.2.1 as a sort of loose reference for Nemo because of their similarities while writing this, so when I’m refering to that and that menu entry, it’s Caja’s menu entries that I’m speaking of, but applied to Nemo):
1. Add the ability to have the file bookmarks as a file tree, i.e. to be able to have bookmarks inside other bookmarks (thus making the latter like directories/folders), or hyperlinks as bookmarks, as in M$ Windows’ Windows Explorer. Showing the bookmarks as a file tree in the Places (or Tree) sidebars is also a good idea.
2. Add the abilitity to have the bookmarks be able to invoke terminal commands, e.g. Nemo (or whatever it is renamed to, as suggested at [3.] below) -> Bookmarks -> Edit Bookmarks -> Location… to become “Location or Terminal command”. Thus we may have “firefox -new-tab “, for example, or ANY terminal command whatsoever. I consider this a great possible feature. What do you think?
3. Renaming Nemo to something else is not a bad idea, considering that a poster above pointed out that another file manager for GNU/Linux is also named “Nemo”. The choice regarding the name is yours, of course; here are some of my suggestions for a new name: Mnemonax (It includes “Nemo” in itself; BTW, have you noticed that “Nemo” spelled backwards equals “Omen”?
That’s kind of creepy…), Nomanic (“Cinnamon” spelled backwards and with duplicated letters removed), Cinna(M)(o)Nemo, RegANemong (that’s “GnomEnager” spelled backwards) , etc. Anemone & Anemonefish are also not taken as names for file managers (yet! 
), and they also include the string “nemo” as part of them.
4. Add the ability to customize the contents and the order of items of the right-click context menu, as well as to reset any changes to it (similar to MintMenu’s -> Edit menu… -> Main Menu settings window).
5. Add Edit -> Toolbar -> Toolbar Editor, like in EoM/EoG (Eye of Mate / Eye of GNOME). That would definitely solve the problem of overcrowding toolbar items, if you intend to add more (or the ability to add/remove/rearrange the toolbar buttons/icons).
6. As you and others have pointed out before: an optional file contents preview sidebar like in Windows’ file manager or KDE’s Dolphin, as well as an Edit -> Preferences tab for setting MIMETYPE file associations, based on AssoGiator for example (which is a GUI program for setting MIMETYPE associations for GNOME, I may have provided you with the wrong name for the application, since I’m citing from my bad memory).
7. A better GUI (like a tab in Preferences) for more fine-grain disk mounting preferences, and new Preferences tabs for newly added functions in Nemo.
8. More View types as in M$ Windows would be a nice touch. Also, the view type choice and the zoom setting could be accessible from the right-click context menu, which would also be nice.
9. A “Custom filepath / Browse/Enter file path…” addition to the “Move to” and “Copy to” right-click context menu entries.
10. A “Create/Edit File Template” entry in the “Create Document” right-click context menu. It could be linked to Nautilus-/Caja-based Nautilus Extensions like “nautilus-action(s)-manager” or “nautilus-actions” or “nautilus-”. It could use code from gThumb’s (toolbar) -> Tools… -> Customize… -> Commands feature… or it could also possess something similar to suggestion [2.].
11. Add entries in the Edit -> Preferences -> Plugins tab to download and install plugins for Nemo, as well as to configure them (like with a button named ” Preferences/Options” (similar to Pluma’s Preferences -> Plugins or gThumb’s Edit -> Preferences – > Extensions perhaps?).
12. Add the feature to add more “[right-click context menu] -> Arrange by” sort types in Edit -> Preferences -> List columns. This feature could really be useful for sorting types according to metadata attributes, as with M$ Windows’ Windows Explorer’s feature to add audio/video metadata sort filters for the “Arrange by” entry of the right click context menu of the file manager (like in gThumb’s Edit -> Preferences -> Browser -> Caption -> *metadata sorting entries*). Also see my suggestion No. [8.] and No. [10.].
Also, look at WinXP/Win7′s Windows Explorer “Arrange by” context menu entries for ideas about additional features for Nemo’s context menu’s “Arrange items / Arrange by / Arrange items by”. This may involve splitting the current “Icon View” (which also shows thumbnails) into “Icon View” (with or without thumbnails) and a more customizable “Thumbnail View”. “List View” also may provide a Preferences-configurable “with or without thumbnails” option (in Caja “List View” does provide thumbnails by default)…
13. Add the ability to set a custom date+time sorting/presentation format (method) to “Edit -> Display -> Date” (and also add more date/time format templates), and the changes to be reflected be in the statusbar and especially the file properties window. This could use code already available from Pluma’s “Edit -> Insert date and time” feature.
14. Add a “-> View -> Fullscreen (F11)” mode.
15. Improve the “Go -> Search for files…” search feature in the style of Pluma’s View -> Find… and View -> Replace and gThumbs’ Edit -> Find… (and maybe add regexp search mode checkbox to the search/replace options as well!). Additions such as Clem’s mention of “Better search (ala Firefox)” are also to be included in this type of feature.
16. Add a “Keyboard/Mouse shortcuts” tab (and feature…) in Edit -> Preferences, to set the mouse & keyboard shortcuts of Nemo, like in GIMP’s Edit -> Keyboard Shortcuts (also with the ability to reset them to their individual values, or to reset them all to the default valuas, for example?).
17. Preferences option to show more file properties in the statusbar when a file(s) is selected (like in WinXP/Win7).
18. Optional Win7-like breadcrumb/location bar behavior (maybe as an option in a possible “Advanced” supertab in Edit -> Preferences?) (and a WinXP and/or Win7-like dropdown menu button (and behavior…) to the location bar’s right end perhaps?).
19. Link to a third-party mass renamer utility in addition to the built-in Rename… function (see [10.] for a possible implementation strategy), or a built-in mass renamer functionality (“Advanced Mass File Rename” menu entry?).
20. Help -> Contents & Help -> Keyboard and Mouse shortcuts documentation, when Nemo gets more features to be documented…
21. gThumb-like Edit -> Find duplicates… and View -> Filter… features.
22. KDE Dolphin-like optional “integrated terminal that follows the current directory” feature (in addition to the right-click context menu’s “Open in Terminal”, not as a substition of it, but if the former is implemented, the “Open in Terminal” entry and other advanced context menu entries in the context menu could be moved to the “Actions/Scripts ->” context entry if ‘my’ suggestion No. [10.] is also implemented).
23. As others have suggested above, either a ??-steps-limited or an unlimited Undo/Redo option in the Edit menu, like in Caja.
24. Easy “switch to root for or for all actions” with a warning message before it’s activated. ‘My’ suggestion [10.] is a possible implementation strategy for this.
25. Consider adding an Edit -> Preferences -> Profiles tab with Import/Export/Reset configuration profile functions — to automate the recovery of your favorite settings (which you can’t remember well because of their sheer number).
26. An Edit -> Preferences option for fine-grain configuration of the exact file sorting methods (like in context menu’s “Arrange items by ->” -> Name and -> Type — which alphanumeric rules do these 2 file sorting mechanisms use by default and the ability to change the rules for sorting of these 2 file sorting mechanisms…)
27. Keep the application speedy (especially this!) and yet simple to use and configure, despite approaching the feature overbloat and file-size-increase-due-to-the-addition/implementation-of-new-features-by-means-of-new-code-additions/changes stage of development. ;D
Also, good gettext/.po i18n & l10n support is a must, as always.
28. What Clem mentioned as a feature roadmap in the post, as well as what the rest of the nice posters suggested as ideas above and below my post. ;D
P.S. I realize that most of the suggestions/ideas people post(ed) here may not get into Nemo, but it’s still nice to have a list of possible feature proposals (even in the form of comments in a website… that need to be compiled and put into a list of suggestions for brainstorming/todo), since someone may find whatever ideas/features someone has proposed to be a good idea for his/her application, or for some other purpose/idea. Cheers!
~sahwar
when my desktop starts i have no icons so i have to open the file manager manly to re show all my shortcuts and the trash …. ,can you plz add an option to use nautilus as default or nemo as default ! and also add a script sent-to ^^ this will be better
Great work, people.
Our support from the Greek LinuxMint Community.
One of the features I had actually hacked into nautilus using some deb package was the navigation links that were just flat out missing in nautilus.
One thing I see missing is the preview option – in nautilus I was able to press the space bar and preview certain files – ala Mac OSX. I think this was done using sushi.
Is it possible to re-enable this?
There already seems to be another file manager called nemo:
http://www.iola.dk/nemo/
no file/folder sharing options in nemo?
hello. I have been using nemo 1.0.1 after downloading cinnamon 1.6. There were a few things that is frustrating. pressing f3 enables the dual pane view. But since both have the same color, it is hard to diffrentiate between the active pane and the non active one.
the second frustration is also connected to this. at the top, there are buttons for the folder tree. However both the panes folder tree is shown in the same place ( the active one is shown) . Would it be possible to split it such that this folder tree at the top is also split. it would make working much easier
Regarding the dual pane view, I noticed the following bug:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/linuxmint/+bug/1056523
(last tested in nemo 1.0.3).
Very nice job here. I was upset when I saw the announcement on OMGUbuntu. The fork was the only option which works
Good job with Nemo!
Highest on my wish list is the possibility to collapse the categories in the places sidebar.
I have lots of bookmarks and partitions showing up which makes the sidebar very cluttered.
Great job with Nemo!
But please, please fix old nautilus bug where you can not select multiple files with just mouse (drag select) in List view mode.
Please?
Great article… and has an unimaginable correct statement: “Nautilus 3.6 is a catastrophe”. Very well said, Clem!
Incredible work, the tabs are working now.
One more improvement would be to hide when you the transfer file dialog, showing and hiding it with one toolbar button, like pathfinder filemanager in osx .
Great work, Clem! I peeped in to see when the new Linux Mint would be released and I see you will have a dedicated Cinnamon version! This makes me real excited to see these changes being made. Mint has come a long way since Bianca!
Nautilus’ best features by far were emblems and “manual positioning” of icons. If you had a directory full of stuff that you need to make sense of and sort, this was heaven sent. I will take up any filemanager that brings back these features!
I put a lot of effort into organizing files, with any upgrade path I chose I will lose all the “metadata”.
We’ll put this back, but in the meantime and until we do, you can use Caja (it has emblems and notes support).
Hi!
I think it’d be a great idea if you could make Nemo create entries at fstab for SMB shares which have been added by using the Filemanager instead of just adding them to the GUI, so, they would also be usable by terminals and in text mode.
Ty,
Hi Clement
I am currently using Ubuntu 12.04. I have a number of user accounts because I am testing my desktop options. I dislike both Unity and GNOME Shell. In my main account I am using GNOME Classic. On one of my other user accounts I installed Cinnamon. All I can say is wow what a beautiful desktop. You Cinnamon guys really rock. Cinnamon has the potential to become the best desktop. You guys give yr users what the want. I wish Canonical would do the same.
After I installed Cinnamon my desktop icons ( Computer, Home, Network and Trash) all disappeared from my GNOME Classic desktop. I used gconf-editor to enable them. I went into gconf-editor and saw they were still enabled.
I then went into my Cinnamon desktop and saw that they were also missing there. I saw that in the Cinnamon settings that they were not selected so I selected them. This resulted in the icons also appearing on my GNOME Classic desktop. The issue I have is that when I click on the Home Icon launches Nemo but from Places Nautilus launches. I am to have Home in Cinnamon to launch Nemo but in GNOME Classic I would like Home to launch Nautilus. Is there any way to get the Cinnamon Desktop settings to only work in Cinnamon and not in GNOME Classic. I do not want to uninstall Cinnamon to fix this.
I have also installed the KDE desktop on another account.
Regards
Philip
You can’t have both file managers as default. The solution is to enable only one as default and this one will handle the desktop. The other file manager will still be available like any other ordinary application.
/etc/xdg/autostart/nemo-autostart.desktop
and
/etc/xdg/autostart/nautilus-autostart.desktop
are the two files that shouldn’t start together.
Here is my idea:
when using cinnamon, rename /etc/xdg/autostart/nautilus-autostart.desktop to something like /etc/xdg/autostart/nautilus-autostart.desktop.ori so it won’t autolaunch;
same process for gnome-shell, if you want to use gnome-shell instead, this time renaming nemo-autostart.desktop to something else.
Now, how to do it? The directory /usr/share/xsessions contains the desktop files responsible for launching different sessions, that ‘s where mdm looks when you select a desktop.
So I guess that it is possible to change the line starting with Exec= to make it behave like I want. I’ll try it tomorrow at the office where I have both environment (Gnome-shell and Cinnamon).
In Nautilus I could right-click a file, choose the comments tab and add a comment to the file. The file showed a different icon that meant it had a comment attached to it. In Nemo I can’t find how to do the same thing – that is add a comment to a file.
Anyone able to help? Many thanks.
My locale is fr_CA.utf8 and a few strings, in Nemo or in Cinnamon are not translated in french, When you show Cinnamon to someone, it doesn’t look professional. What can I do to correct this behaviour? I saw that Cinnamon and Nemo are supposed to be 100 % translated in french, probably fr_FR.utf8 only…
SUGGESTION, Suggestion, Suggestion:
Why there should always a “left panel” with small icons like “home”, “desktop”, “Downloads”, etc? IMHO this is a terrible waste of space.
Solution: Transform Nemo (or any other file browser) to look and behave like Firefox: No “left panel” anymore; those icons should be put on top, for instance, Firefox-like. Allow default opening of directories in tabs, either from the top icons, and from within. Allow always the path to files visible always (again, like Firefox does). Allow the search function visible, like Firefox. Although aesthetic, these changes will improve the experience, rapidity to explore places, and to use better the space, which would also permit to have bigger preview icons for files.
I just want to help to improve. The old ways that file browsers originated from the times of Windows 3.0. This is not Windows, and we are in the XXI century. Let’s improve, but DO NOT follow the strange idiotic philosophy of Gnome team.
Nice move. One feature I really miss is nautilus-open-terminal, which allow to open current position in a terminal (option accessible from File on Nautilus menu); that’s proved to be very useful to me.
I like Nemo a lot and am keen to use it as part of Mint but it has an issue. I love the cleanness of design and would prefer to use it if possible. I reported the issue in the linux mint forums but haven’t received useful feedback yet.
http://goo.gl/6h1il
Basically when copying a GB+ file to a 16G USB it reports the write speed at over twice the actual and finishes before the real copy has finished. So far not a problem. But then if you select “Unmount” or eject the USB it does so … while the file is still being copied. So the output is corrupted.
For contrast, SpaceFM will also report a somewhat faster than actual copy but when you choose to eject the USB it displays a processing message until the copy is finished and the USB is ready for removal.
Really good work !!!
For me only one thing is still missing : a Nautilus Actions or Nautilus Script like and I would like to know when you planned to add it to Nemo?
Thanks,
No need. Something much better is coming up: an action API.
Thanks, it’s good to know that something is planned (mainly if this something is much better)
I know it’s not easy to estimate, but when do you think the action API feature will be available?
Nice work. Clean and easy. Will there ever be an option to turn off recently used? There maybe already but have not been able to find this.
Hello developer,
I am glad about this Nemo new file manager for Linux. I wanna ask you. Can this feature added?
1. Suppose there is a folder contains some debs (complete app and dependencies) named Netbeans.
2. Right click in Nemo, select Sudo This!
3. In background, sudo dpkg -i *.deb will do the job installing the Netbeans app.
4. User enough with inserting password, no Terminal anymore.
Can we? Because in poor internet country like Indonesia, we need this feature for giving same application to many computers and internet is not enough for downloading repo.
If Nemo will have this (using script or what), I will be glad
Thank you. I hope you will kindly reply to my mail.
I am sorry for my bad English.
From Indonesia,
Ade M
Hi is there anyway to customize the theme of Nemo ?
hi.
i like to used cinnamon, and Nemo file manager. cause it is so fast and looks clean,
but i am kind of habitual to kde,
i like to see folders in groups, and i also like previews of my multimedia files,
is there any way to customize nemo file manager ?
or can i install Dolphin file manager at linux mint ?