File Manager for FreeBSD

free-and-bsd said:
Interesting! Thank you. And why do you replace its wm with fvwm?
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My fvwm configuration was developed for over 7 years. I find it much easier to use than any other WM out there.
In fact I started using xfce not so long time ago (few months), just to have all the features of desktop environment.

Basically xfce is extension for my fvwm config and not the other way around ;)
 
I had semi-consistent crashes in thunar while renaming files. I searched Internet and found it was a known issue, but seems no clear resolution. So I moved to xfe.
 
I'm usnig fvwm with pcmanfm. So far it is working quite reliably and doing all I want. And since I don't want the "desktop integration" features cause they give me nothing at all, it's all right.
Don't remember if I used thunar or not, but finally I stopped my choice with pcmanfm and am quite happy. To some reasonable extent it does have those desktop features.
 
I ran pcmanfm under FreeBSD, used jwm as the window manager and pcmanfm as the filemanager along with pcmanfm --desktop to provide desktop icons. Currently under OpenBSD however I'm running xfe which includes xfw text editor and a images viewer. A little awkward at first moving from pcmanfm, but soon got used to it. My entire installation is base OpenBSD and ...

firefox-esr
libreoffice
mpv
mtpaint
xfe

which serves all my needs (I use twm windows manager that comes as part of the X11 within the base system).

Did try fvwm for a bit (that's also in the base system), however I hit problems with having numlock on for doing things like spreadsheet work and (control) buttons/keys not working until only after numlock was deactivated that made it pretty much unusable for my layout desire/purposes. I particularly like twm's tab sized window titles rather than full width, as with tabs even when maximised a window still has some desktop space to the right of the tab that you can click to bring up the menu (I also have right click set to show the 'tasklist' (iconmanager), making for easy launching/switching.

 
rufwoof said:
My entire installation is base OpenBSD and ... I hit problems with having numlock on for doing things like spreadsheet work
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In FreeBSD and fvwm version 2 I don't seem to have any problems with keyboard keys. OpenBSD base system, BTW, includes fvwm version 1, which is outdated and limited.
 
Thanks. I did see the later version of fvwm in the repositories but never installed it. twm meets my needs and gets me away from my prior primary boot of Debian (and systemD).
 
sysutils/py-ranger

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hbsd , thank you. I'll try. My search is due to the fact that I recently switched from GNOME to fvwm3 and am now trying to get rid of all things related to GNOME (gnome-photos, gnome-screenshot, ...). And replace them with lightweight 'X11 things' (so far I have only replaced gnome-terminal with xterm). I don't really need much: tigervnc-viewer, gvim, okular, firefox, thunderbird, and a monster like libreoffice... These do not seem to depend on GNOME :-/.
 
Andrey Lanin said:
And replace them with lightweight 'X11 things'
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pcmanfm pulls in the gvfs stuff (entirely for the recycle bin) which is a little annoying. It tends to be quite large.
  • xfe is quite good.
  • XFile is good if you like the Motif / mwm ecosystem.
Its surprising that there are relatively few file managers these days. That said, the features that they need is deceptively large. I made good progress on my own but it was fairly non-standard and a more common one was used instead for a "Desktop as a Service" solution. I keep meaning to revive it for my own uses but end up resorting to the cli anyway. Habit!
 
Andrey Lanin said:
I like Motif - I worked in CDE (on Solaris) for 10 years. Now I have x11/cde-25 installed, but fvwm3 seems a little more convenient to me
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Nice. CDE was the pinnacle of desktops (and was a lot of work to finally get open-sourced).

Perhaps give XFile a shot in CDE. It fits right in with the Xresources so looks native (I find the original dtfile to be a little weak with large files).

That said, yes quite a few applications simply do dumb things with the aging mwm/dtwm windowing standards so fvwm3 likely does give a less problematic experience!

Xfe uses the fox toolkit which is light and looks pretty good but doesn't *quite* fit in with any other tools.
 
kpedersen said:
Nice. CDE was the pinnacle of desktops (and was a lot of work to finally get open-sourced).

Perhaps give XFile a shot in CDE. It fits right in with the Xresources so looks native (I find the original dtfile to be a little weak with large files).
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I'll have to try it...
kpedersen said:
Xfe uses the fox toolkit which is light and looks pretty good but doesn't *quite* fit in with any other tools.
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Yes, that's the problem.
 
Andrey Lanin said:
Yes, that's the problem.
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If you want light *and* consistent, one thing to consider is WindowMaker and GNUstep. The former is well maintained (adheres to EWMH and even many of the ad-hoc freedesktop.org standards) and the latter provides a number of tools, including file manager, interface builds, etc.

The only disadvantage is that it is Objective-C based (minus windowmaker, that is C). If you like the language, thats great (I don't mind it) but I do fear this might become a maintenance issue many years in the future.

Finally (before I shut up ;)), the same guy behind XFile also does a "modern" mwm (https://fastestcode.org/emwm.html). Can't be used with CDE (without some largish engineering), but for a light AIXwindows style desktop, it could work.
 
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