Nautilus: GNOME File Manager
GNOME includes a “graphical shell”, Nautilus. It combines file manager, web browser, FTP client, and much more. It also provides access to tools for customizing GNOME (thus replacing GNOME Control Center which was included in GNOME 1.4 and earlier releases).
To open a new Nautilus window, choose in the , or double-click on any folder icon on your desktop, such as Home icon.
6.1. Managing Your Files With Nautilus
As most modern graphic file managers, Nautilus shows the contents of a selected folder using icons to represent files and subfolders. Double-clicking on any file or folder opens it (for data files, it starts the appropriate application which opens this file, as configured in File Types and Programs preference tool). Right-clicking on a file or folder produces a popup menu. Using this menu, you can delete or rename the file, view and change file properties or permissions, and more.
Nautilus also provides an easy way to move and copy files between folders. To move a file from one folder to another, open these folders in separate Nautilus windows (you can use command). Select the file you want to move, and drag it from one window into another using the mouse. You can also drag a file or folder to the desktop. To copy file, press-and-hold Ctrl while dragging the file.
To delete files, drag them to the trash can icon on your desktop.
Nautilus provides many more tools to manipulate your files. It is also highly customizable, so you can easily change the way files are displayed (for example, you can choose a custom icon for a given file). For detailed description of all these possibilities, read Nautilus manual, available from menu of Nautilus.
6.2. Accessing Floppies and Other Removable Media
To access files on floppy disks, CD-ROMs and other removable media, right-click on any vacant spot on the desktop and choose the required media from the submenu of the menu (assuming that your system is correctly configured, that is, you have the appropriate entry in /etc/fstab file). This will open a Nautilus window showing the contents of the selected media.
Before removing a floppy disk or other removable media from the drive, you must
- Close all windows accessing files on this disk, including Nautilus windows, terminal windows, and others
- Unmount the disk by right-clicking on the disk icon on the desktop and choosing from the popup menu.
6.3. Other Features of Nautilus
In addition to the basic features listed above, Nautilus has many other advanced and exciting capabilities. Here we list some of them, referring the reader to >Nautilus manual for detailed descriptions.
- Nautilus can be customized in many ways. In particular, you can change background and icons used for files and folders and font used for captions.
- You can assign custom icon to a specific file, or rescale the icon for a specific file, so that the most important files really stand out.
- You can assign an “emblem” (such as New or Favorite) to a file, which will be put on top of the file icon.
- Files can be sorted by name, type, modification date, or the emblem you assigned to them.
- Nautilus can also be used as Web browser (with limited capabilities) and FTP client: just enter the URL (for example, ftp://ftp.gnome.org) in the Go To field.
- Nautilus can also be used as a music player: just open a folder containing music files in MP3 format, and Nautilus switches to music player mode.