Nautilus (file manager)

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Nautilus (file manager)

Nautilus is the official file manager

File manager

A file manager or file browser is a computer program that provides a user interface to work with file systems. The most common operations used are create, open, edit, file viewer, computer printer, streaming media, rename, move, file copying, file deletion, attributes, properties, search/find, and permissions....
for the GNOME

Gnome

A gnome is a mythical creature characterized by its extremely small size and wiktionary:subterranean lifestyle. The word gnome is derived from the New Latin gnomus....
desktop. The name is a play on words, evoking the shell of a nautilus

Nautilus

Nautilus is the common name of any marine creatures of the cephalopod family Nautilidae, the sole family of the suborder Nautilina....
to represent an operating system shell

Shell (computing)

In computing, a shell is a piece of software that provides an Interface for users. Typically, the term refers to an operating system shell which provides access to the services of a kernel ....
. Nautilus replaced Midnight Commander

Midnight Commander

GNU Midnight Commander is a free software cross-platform orthodox file manager and a clone of Norton Commander.Midnight Commander is a console application with a text user interface....
in GNOME 1.4 and was the default from version 2.0 onwards.

Nautilus was the flagship product of the now-defunct Eazel

Eazel

Eazel was a software company based in Mountain View, Santa Clara County, California from 1999 to 2001.The enterprise was staffed with former employees of Apple Computer, Netscape Communications Corporation, Be Inc., Linuxcare, Microsoft, Red Hat and Sun Microsystems, among others....
Inc. Released under the GNU Lesser General Public License

GNU Lesser General Public License

The GNU Lesser General Public License or LGPL is a free software license published by the Free Software Foundation . It was designed as a compromise between the strong-copyleft GNU General Public License and permissive licenses such as the BSD licenses and the MIT License....
, Nautilus is free software

Free software

Free Software or software libre is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with minimal restrictions only to ensure that further recipients can also do these things and to prevent consumer-facing hardware...
.

History
Version 1.0 was released on March 13, 2001, and incorporated into GNOME 1.4.

Version 2.0 was a port to GTK+ 2.0.

Version 2.2 saw a lot of changes to make it more compliant with User Interface Guidelines.

Version 2.4 switched the desktop folder to ~/Desktop (the ~ represents the user's "Home"

Home directory

In multi-user operating systems, a home directory is a directory which contains the personal Computer file of a given User of the system.Separating user data from system-wide data avoids redundancy and makes backups of important files relatively simple....
folder) to be compliant with freedesktop.org

Freedesktop.org

freedesktop.org is a project to work on interoperability and shared base technology for free software desktop environments for the X Window System on Linux and other Unix-like operating systems....
standards.

In the version included with GNOME

Gnome

Spatial file manager

In computing, a spatial file manager is a file manager that uses a spatial metaphor to represent files and folders as if they are real physical objects....
.

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Encyclopedia

Nautilus is the official file manager

File manager

Gnome

Nautilus

Nautilus is the common name of any marine creatures of the cephalopod family Nautilidae, the sole family of the suborder Nautilina....
to represent an operating system shell

Shell (computing)

Midnight Commander

Eazel

GNU Lesser General Public License

Free software

History

Version 1.0 was released on March 13, 2001, and incorporated into GNOME 1.4.

Version 2.0 was a port to GTK+ 2.0.

Version 2.2 saw a lot of changes to make it more compliant with User Interface Guidelines.

Version 2.4 switched the desktop folder to ~/Desktop (the ~ represents the user's "Home"

Home directory

Freedesktop.org

Gnome

Spatial file manager

In computing, a spatial file manager is a file manager that uses a spatial metaphor to represent files and folders as if they are real physical objects....
. The "classic" interface is still available by a filing cabinet

Filing cabinet

A filing cabinet is a piece of office furniture usually used to store paper documents in file folders. In the most simple sense, it is an enclosure for drawers in which items are stored....
shaped icon, by an option in the "Edit -> Preferences -> Behavior" menu in Nautilus, in a folder's context menu, and by using the "--browser" switch when started by a command via a launcher or shell

Shell (computing)

Linux distribution

A Linux distribution is a member of the family of Unix-like software distributions built on top of the Linux kernel. Such distributions consist of a large collection of software applications such as word processors, spreadsheets, media players and database applications....
s have made "browser" mode the default.

GNOME 2.14 introduced a version of Nautilus with improved searching, integrated optional Beagle

Beagle (software)

Beagle is a desktop search for Linux and other such modern Unix-like systems, enabling the user to search documents, chat logs, email and contact lists in a similar way to Spotlight in Mac OS X, and Windows Search or Google Desktop under Microsoft Windows....
support and the ability to save searches as virtual folder

Virtual folder

In computing, a virtual folder generally denotes an organizing principle for files that is not dependent on their physical location in a directory ....
s.

With the release of GNOME 2.22, Nautilus has been ported to the newly introduced GVFS

GVFS

GVFS is a replacement for GnomeVFS, the GNOME Virtual File System. Still in development as of , it optionally allows supported virtual file systems to be mounted through Filesystem in Userspace....
, the replacement virtual file system for the aging GnomeVFS.

The latest stable release of Nautilus (2.24.0) adds some new features (tabbed browsing, better tab completion etc.).

Features

Nautilus supports browsing local filesystems as well as filesystems available through the GVFS

GVFS

File Transfer Protocol

File Transfer Protocol is a network protocol used to transfer data from one computer to another through a network such as the Internet.FTP is a file transfer protocol for exchanging and manipulating files over a Transmission Control Protocol computer network....
sites, Windows SMB

Server Message Block

In computer networking, Server Message Block operates as an Application layer mainly used to provide shared access to Computer file, Computer printer, serial ports, and miscellaneous communications between nodes on a network....
shares, ObexFTP protocol often implemented on cellphones, Files transferred over shell protocol, HTTP and WebDAV

WebDAV

Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning, or WebDAV, is a set of extensions to the Hypertext Transfer Protocol that allows users to collaboratively edit and manage files on remote World Wide Web servers....
servers and SFTP

SSH file transfer protocol

In computing, the SSH File Transfer Protocol is a network protocol that provides file transfer and manipulation functionality over any reliable data stream....
servers.

Bookmarks, window backgrounds, emblems, notes, and add-on scripts are all implemented, and the user has the choice between icon, list, or compact list views. In browser mode, Nautilus keeps a history of visited folders, similar to many web browsers, permitting easy access to previously visited folders.

Nautilus can display previews of files in their icons, be they text files, images, sound or video files via thumbnailers such as Totem

Totem (media player)

Totem is a media player for the GNOME computer desktop environment which runs on Linux, Solaris , Berkeley Software Distribution and other Unix and Unix-like systems....
. Audio files are previewed (played back over GStreamer

GStreamer

GStreamer is a Pipeline based multimedia framework written in the C with the type system based on GObject. GStreamer allows a programmer to create a variety of media-handling components, including simple Audio frequency playback, audio and video...
) when the pointer is hovering over them.

For its own interface, Nautilus includes original vectorized

Vector graphics

Vector graphics is the use of geometrical Primitive s such as point s, line , curves, and shapes or polygon, which are all based upon mathematical equations, to represent s in computer graphics....
icons designed by Susan Kare

Susan Kare

Susan Kare is an artist and graphic designer who created many of the graphical user interface elements for the Apple Inc. Macintosh in the 1980s....
.

With the use of the GIO library, Nautilus tracks modification of local files in real time, eliminating the need to refresh the display manually. GIO internally supports Gamin

Gamin

In Linux computer systems, Gamin is a monitoring system for computer files and directory that independently implements a subset of FAM, the File alteration monitor....
and FAM

File alteration monitor

In computing, the File Alteration Monitor, also known as FAM and sgi_fam, provides a subsystem developed by Silicon Graphics for Unix-like operating systems....
, Linux's inotify

Inotify

inotify is a Linux kernel subsystem that provides file system event notification. It was written by John McCutchan with help from Robert Love and later Amy Griffis to replace dnotify....
, and Solaris' File Events Notification system.

Nautilus (file manager)

History

Features

See also

External links