Xfce4 rant

OK, so I use Kali Linux daily at work because of what I do. Just updated and the version we use has Xfce4 as a desktop. Used to be fine, now instead of actually viewing and acting on files, Thunar only provides a "catfish" search and you apparently can't see your files any longer? No apparent away to turn this off.

I am switching to something actually useful like DWM or maybe open box. Really disappointed.
 
DWM and Openbox don't have file managers. You could check out pcmanfm as an alternative to thunar. Or dolphin (lots of dependencies) or Caja.
 
OK, so I use Kali Linux daily at work because of what I do. Just updated and the version we use has Xfce4 as a desktop. Used to be fine, now instead of actually viewing and acting on files, Thunar only provides a "catfish" search and you apparently can't see your files any longer? No apparent away to turn this off.

I am switching to something actually useful like DWM or maybe open box. Really disappointed.
Typical. FOSS developers emulating Apple/Android because fear, uncertainty, doubt.
 
DWM and Openbox don't have file managers. You could check out pcmanfm as an alternative to thunar. Or dolphin (lots of dependencies) or Caja.
I know. Switched to LXQt and that was exactly what I was looking for. Too bad: Xfce4 used to be nice.
 
Typical. FOSS developers emulating Apple/Android because fear, uncertainty, doubt.
Yeah, that I can't "see" my files without searching for them is idiotic. Like I don't know where they are. Heck, even Apple now includes a file manager on iOS that is at least somewhat useful, relatively speaking.

I normally only use command line on Kali but sometimes I still use graphical tools.
 
Try xfe. Or worker. Both are small, fast and have few dependencies.
After the last update to xfce I ended up with a barely usable desktop and went to windowmaker. That the close button is top-right grates on me a little bit, but I might get it over with one day.

To completely shock people you can use fvwm95.
 
Used to be fine, now instead of actually viewing and acting on files, Thunar only provides a "catfish" search and you apparently can't see your files any longer? No apparent away to turn this off.
AFAIK catfish is only a frontend to several search engines (doodle, find, slocate and tracker). What happens if you deinstall it? Thunar should not depend on it.
 
Yeah, it is a file search tool apparently. Honestly I didn't even try. I was so disgusted that some designer thought a search was what I should be shown when opening a file manager that I just dumped the whole thing. Knee jerk reaction I know.
 
Nope, tried it don’t like it. Not bad, I just didn’t like it. Pcmanfm or xfe are my favorite lite file managers.
 
I have not seen this behavior in thunar, but I use it primarily as a menu for a media pc. I didn't know what catfish was until just now. Thunar 4.16 to me looks very much the same as 4.14 but now remembers folder views, which is a feature I find pleasant. When I need to search I query the locate database from a terminal window on my workstation. I've used pcmanfm under xfce in the past when thunar was buggy.
 
It caught me off guard because I wanted to see the files, not search for them. Any window location I opened (system, home, etc) all gave the same view with no apparent ability to actually view any files.
 
OK, so I use Kali Linux daily at work because of what I do. Just updated and the version we use has Xfce4 as a desktop. Used to be fine, now instead of actually viewing and acting on files, Thunar only provides a "catfish" search and you apparently can't see your files any longer? No apparent away to turn this off.

I am switching to something actually useful like DWM or maybe open box. Really disappointed.
Thunar is not the only recent issue with XFCE4. If you want a volume control on your desktop, xfce4-mixer is no longer available and they recommend the pulseaudio mixer instead, which of course pulls in pulseaudio. Part of the reason I installed xfce4 on one machine was to have no pulseaudio messing up audio. Time to move to LXQT or something along those lines.
 
I can't rammender the reason, but years ago I chose pcmanfm over {pcmanfm-qt, thunar, caja} to use on i3. It works great. No complaint.
 
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