gene heskett posted on Mon, 25 Apr 2011 22:15:18 -0400 as excerpted:
> Sorry, konqueror's claim to be a file manager has always struck me as
> bogus. Compared to the mc of 6 to 10 years ago, its worthless.
For the GUI inclined, it was/is decent.
> OTOH,
> features are disappearing from mc at a rate that will have it back to
> failing kindergarten questions in another 2 or 3 years. Yes, I miss the
> glory days when mc could literally do it all.
??
I'm a /regular/ mc user, and while I've seen some changes, the only
/feature/ I know that has disappeared, last I checked, and I expect that
was by accident, was sparse-file copying. I used to use it all the time
to do my backups, using F5/copy, a dir on one filesystem to a dir on
another, keeping all perms and everything, until one time after an update,
the destination had less freespace after the copy than the origin. I was
worried it was filesystem damage on the origin until I traced down a
couple of the differences -- sparse files on the original were suddenly
taking their full space, they were no-longer sparse, on the copy! mc had
NEVER done that before!
So I switched to using cp -ax, which I could have been using all along but
previously had no need to as mc had always "just done the right thing".
But I expect that "feature" loss was simply due to the new maintainer
taking over, after the code had been effectively abandoned for some time,
and not knowing what that whole block of extra code that apparently did
nothing was actually for.
I'd say it's likely been fixed by now, but I've not tried it recently, so
I can't say for sure. I should have checked for a bug and filed one if
necesssary, but I didn't.
Otherwise, I've seen feature gains, some of the more obscure hotkeys
changing, etc, but no losses. Things like the user menu might have
changed/lost-features, but I wouldn't know as I've long had my own user
menu configured.
Oh, and I've had some problems with hotkeys not working in konsole, but
that's because konsole's keybindings have undergone some major changes
recently. I admit I don't like them as stuff that used to "just work"
doesn't now, but I suspect that'll get worked out in the end, as mc is
still detecting konsole and expecting the old keybindings, some of which
have changed. Once they get in sync once again, I expect it'll all work.
(Someone who knew what they were doing could probably make it work now,
but I tried and ended up only making things worse, so... the level of know
what you're doing required must be above /my/ level of know what you're
doing. <shrug>)
So I really am wondering what features you've seen disappear in mc.
>> Typing a path, for instance /usr/share, gives you the option to open it
>> in kde's configured default file manager (dolphin by default, but it
>> can be konqueror or gwenview or...).
>
> Another one I haven't figured out. It needs a reason to exist, and I
> haven't detected one yet. Ditto for Krusader, but it at least defaults
> to a 2 panel mode. Nice eye Kandy, but needs some real ability.
Dolphin... I've not really figured out either, except that it seems to
have been drastically simplified from konqueror, for the "computers for
dummies" crowd. I guess they figure that the computer literate folks
should have no problem switching the preference to a different file
manager if desired, so it makes a reasonable default. I won't argue with
that, AS LONG AS THEY DON'T KILL THE OPTION TO SWITCH TO SOMETHING
ELSE!!! But that would be way more gnome-like than kde-like, and I don't
really see it happening.
Krusader... I've never really used, because it has always been an extra
install, but mc has always been great for sysadmin hat filemanagement and
konqueror or whatever has been fine for the trivial stuff, so I simply
never was motivated to do the extra install to try it.
But if they do it right, it could be really nice. Back before the turn of
the century when I was still on MS WormOS, I found a really neat two-panel
style file manager available as freeware (not freedomware, unfortunately,
and IDR the name), that had the idea of putting the copy/move/etc buttons
in the center column, a really nice GUI arrangement for functions that
transfer files from one panel to the other. Plus, the big "new" thing in
filemanagers at the time was the ability to work with compressed archives
as "virtual" filesystems, much as mc does, and it handled that rather
better than some of the others I tried. And IIRC it was somewhat
customizable as well tho not to the extent of mc's user menus. So I was
quite happy with it. If krusader is equally as useful, I may well wonder
how I ever did without it after a period, much as I do mc.
But certainly when I'm wearing my sysadmin hat, mc's definitely my file
manager of choice too. And when I'm wearing my user hat, gwenview seems
to be surprisingly effective -- and would be more so if I could configure
it to show all files, not just images/video. But other than music files
too, that's generally what I'm managing when I have my user hat on anyway,
and gwenview as an image manager is quite effective indeed.
--
Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman
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