[PLUG] OK, GUI file managers all suck

[John Jason Jordan]

On Tue, 27 Jun 2006 02:52:25 -0700
"Michael M." <nixlists at writemoore.net> dijo:

> 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.

I did try Midnight Commander, but I find it easier and more logical to
have a tree in the left pane and when you click on a folder in the tree
its contents are displayed in the right pane. But your comment points
out one important thing in all these discussions -- our minds all work
differently.

The very best file manager I ever used was Norton File Manager for NT
3.51. You had a choice of various "looks," but the default was similar
to the original file manager that Windows 3.1 came with. Except Norton
added all the stuff that Microsoft didn't think anyone would want -- an
FTP utility, built in zip compression or (optionally) compress with
NT's compression, a file viewer pane (like Konqueror, but it popped up
on the bottom instead of taking over the whole window), file
associations, network points, share creation, permissions, and just
about anything else one would want to do with a file manager. It was
compact, came up instantly, and everything you needed to do was in one
program window. 

I'm learning a new term here, I think -- "recursive." That's when it
moves not just the folder you're dragging, but all its contents,
subfolders, and their contents as well, right? 

OK, off to try to copy this installation to the 60 GB partition. But
this time I'm not going to cross my fingers. I think the computer saw
me do that last time. Realizing that I didn't know what I was doing it
deliberately screwed things up. Computers'll do that, ya know.