[PLUG] OK, GUI file managers all suck

[Michael M.]

John Jason Jordan wrote:
> [KvetchMode:On]
> Having spent the past hour trying to copy my /home/jjj folder from one
> location to another, I guess I'm going to have to learn to do file
> copying via the command line. I drag the folder to the new location and
> it copies some files, but not others. It copies some folders, but not
> others. And they all act this way -- XFE, Konqueror, Krusader,
> Nautilus, and even when I run them from the terminal as root. You have
> to go through painstakingly comparing the two folders to see what
> didn't get copied, then copy just that one file. Over and over. During
> the past year I've tried every GUI file manager there is, and not one
> of them will copy all the subfolders and al the files in those
> subfolders. No warnings, no explanations as to why. I've never figured
> out what the secret is. It's not permissions or ownership because when
> I go back and drag the files one at a time they copy just fine.
>
> The task at hand arises because I have a perfectly good and usable
> Ubuntu Dapper-64 installation that I created in an unused portion of my
> hard disk. I have spent several days getting it all configured.
> installing all my apps, getting wifi working, making sure everything
> was cool. In the process I copied all the files in /home/jjj from my
> borked Breezy installation. The new Dapper installation is ultimately
> going to be my emergency rescue installation, since it is set to mount
> the old Breezy partition. Having done that, today I reformatted the
> borked 60 GB Breezy installation and installed a new, fresh Dapper-64
> on it, which will ultimately be the main installation. Now I need to
> copy all the configs one more time. It took me a couple hours the first
> time, and I'm an hour into it the second time. 
>
> I tried to learn how to use the cp command. Really, I did. I read the
> man page, I googled, and I remain too scared to use it. Too many
> options that I didn't understand. So here I sit, dragging files one at
> a time. And it's too effin' hot, too. <sigh>
> [KvetchMode:Off]
>   


In case you've never tried it, a nice middle-ground between sucky GUI 
file managers and scary command-line file operations is Midnight 
Commander (aka "mc").  It's a classic two-paned file manager with a 
curses interface that runs in a terminal.  Helpfully, it has the main 
file operations displayed in a neat little row across the bottom of the 
terminal, so you don't even have to remember what "F7" does vs. what 
"F8" does.

To copy files or directories, navigate to the file or directory you want 
to copy on one side of mc so that it is highlighted, navigate to the 
destination on the other side, and hit F5.  To move them, rather than 
copy them, hit F6.  If you're using mc in a terminal, you can even use 
the mouse.

I use it much more than I use either Nautilus or 'mv' or 'cp'.  But I 
guess I'm partial to two-paned file managers.  They always made sense to 
me, conceptually; I used one back in Windows days as well.  A good GUI 
two-paned manager for Linux is emelfm, but mc does everything I need and 
has the advantage of working on the console, so I stopped using emelfm.

One thing to keep in mind is that, as with the 'rm' command, deleting a 
file with mc is really deleting it.  It doesn't move it to the trash.  
But it does ask for a confirmation.

-- 
Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA
"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." --S. Jackson