More and more I never even visit websites, I rely on RSS feeds to bring me my meat.
And with Linux Magazine ( http://www.linux-mag.com/ ) sending me about 40 articles a day to read, I am getting a lot more than I have time for. But I was forced to take time out from my schedule today, when I see this article “Divide and Conquer” ( http://www.linux-magazine.com/issues/2008/95/divide_and_conquer ) which tells me about Gnome Commander in all its two panel fully-integrated-with-gnome-desktop glory:
Gnome Commander screenshot
Ever since I got tired of waiting for Nautilus to grow a second pane, I have been working with Konqueror and more lately Dolphin, KDE efforts, well worth the little quirks emerging from their not being a native Gnome desktop integrated applications.
But now I am a happy man.
I first installed the version that comes with Synaptic, which is 1.2.5
Very cool in its Norton Commander deep blue.
The first thing I did was go to Plugins / Configure plugins and enable the File Roller plugin, so I can view archive files and right-mouse click to create them also, on the fly.
I then went to check out the remote connection features, and was upset to see that only FTP and Samba was supported.
A visit to the Gnome Commander website (Help / GNOME Commander on the Web) told me two things:
- I needed 1.2.7 to get support for sftp (without which I cannot work with you…)
- I could download a 1.2.7 package for Ubuntu Hardy via the GetDeb repository link at the foot of the page!
I clicked on the GetDeb link, and futzed about with their website a while, before finally obtaining the package from http://www.getdeb.net/download/3019/0 .
I downloaded it, double clicked on it, and was told that there was already an older, more reliable version installed, advice which I refused to take, and in a few short moments I was rewarded with GNOME Commander 1.2.7 complete with sftp support. OK, I’ll say it: awesome!
The only trouble I had was that it did not seem to be respecting the mime types Nautilus was respecting. So that if I double clicked on an Open Office Document, I got an error message in GNOME Commander, whereas in Nautilus, it executed properly.
Well, there was a page of documentation on this at http://www.nongnu.org/gcmd/doc.html#mime , but what finally saved me (actually, saved GNOME Commander as my favorite file manager right now) was hitting Settings / Options and then going to the Programs tab, and adding “favorite app” relationships between extensions and executables.
Now, when I right-click on a an Open Office text document, I see the label I added and click on that, and everything works.
I love GNOME Commander! It’s so light and quick and brings back so many nice memories…