Hi,
How do you define the best file manager? To me, the only standard is how powerful it is. Thus, for me the winner of the best file manager is pfm, http://p-f-m.sourceforge.net/, because there is no other file managers that are more powerful than it.
To justify my claim, let me begin with a quote from vshnu: "when one is concerned about file manipulation and management ..., a CLI can be a frustratingly terse interface... A GUI file manager can address this problem, but then you... have lost the advantages of the CLI."
I.e., pfm has the normal advantage of a GUI file manager, but its unique feature that allows you to manipulate and manage file and file names using the CLI interface makes it stands out from the crowd. Moreover, there is no other file manager that aligns better with the spirit of grml than pfm's *text based* GUI interface.
To explain it, let me begin with a (long) story,
- Normally, filename completion, wildcarding and the "xargs" command can cover 99% of my file/directory manipulation and management needs.
- If "xargs" is not powerful enough, I use doeach (http://ostatic.com/doeach), which allows me to deal with source file's path, name, and extension separately, and it can build redirection, piping easily on the command line. E.g., piping the selected files through gz and redirect the results in another diectory, named as backup.<org_name>.`date -I`.<org_ext>.
- But there are times when a visual point-and-shoot file selection system beats wildcarding. This is the only time that I need file manager, i.e., for arbitrary file selection (and operation).
The file manager of my choice is PFM. it allows me to build arbitrary file operation shell command (with the arbitrary selected files). That's the main reason, when back in DOS days, I preferred pfm than NC (OK, I admit that I'm biased).
For e.g., a very simple example, covert a bunch of *selected* files as .png files. PFM is able to do:
covert file1.gif file1.png covert file2.Gif file2.png covert file3.JPG file3.png . . .
Using a simple PFM command:
convert =2 =1.png
Another more simpler one is, I keep all the pictures from my digital camera on disk, but also maintain a much much smaller list of picked, good ones. I use pfm to pick the good ones, and create symlink in another directory to the pick ones. You can think of other cases as well.
My point is, there is no other file manager that can help me to the above except pfm (I've (almost) tried every file manager in OSS world). Moreover, the pfm maintainer, Rene, is very helpful too. FYI, there is a new release that recently came out, with lost of good improvements.
I hope everybody will find it useful, and wish that pfm will be included in grml repo.
Thanks