So in this Thunar-themed entry I am going to  show you two different features for Thunar that will bring it up to par with the competition. One of these features is built into Thunar, and the other is an add on. After you’ve included the use of these two items in your general Thunar usage, you might find yourself using Nautilus or Dolphin less and less.

Send to

Included with the Thunar file manager is the ability to send a file to a location. By default Thunar includes Send To entries for:

• Desktop (create a desktop link – icon – for the item.
• Any externally mounted volume.
• Blutooth recipient.
• Email recipient.

You can, of course, extend this Send to menu quite easily. Let’s say you want to add a Flickr entry to the Send to menu. For this you would first want to install the application postr (sudo apt-get install postr will do the trick in Ubuntu). Once you have that installed create the file /usr/share/Thunar/sendto/flickr.desktop and put in it the following contents:
# postr.desktop - Integrate postr into
# the "Send To" menu.
[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Version=1.0
Encoding=UTF-8
TryExec=postr
Exec=postr %F
Icon=postr
Name=Flickr
MimeType=image/jpeg;image/jpg;image/png

You can find plenty of samples for the Sendto menu from the Thunar Xfce Wiki page.

Media tags

One thing that is missing from the basic Thunar installation is the ability to edit media tags. I don’t know how many times I’ve been listening to a song on one device or another, only to have the media tag be wrong. To be able to edit these tags from within Thunar you need to install the thunar-media-tags-plugin. You can do that from either your Add/Remove Software tool (search for “thunar” – no quotes – and you will find it), or you can install it from command line like so:

sudo apt-get install thunar-media-tags-plugin

No matter which way you start it, restart Thunar once it is installed.

Now when you navigate to a media file, right-click the file, and select Properties you will find a new tab called Audio or Video, depending upon the type of media file you are viewing.

Figure 1

When you click on the Audio (or Video) tab you will see the all too familiar  media tags associated with that file (see Figure 1). At this point you can edit the tags to your hearts’ desire. Just make sure, once you are finished editing, that you click the Save button to complete the process.

You can also get a bit more information (un-editable information) about the media file by clicking Properties. This button will show you the file size, bitrate, samplerate, channels, and length of the media file.

Final thoughts

Thunar is one of the more customizable file managers available. Add to that the speed at which it runs, and the availability it offers to nearly all Linux desktops and you should see why it has become my favorite file manager.

The vifm file manager is an ncurses-based file manager with vi keybindings. So if you are used to vi, you will have no problems using vifm. Now vifm is not heavily developed. In fact, the last release was August 7, 2009. But it’s still a worthy file manager for those looking for more text-based management tools. In this article, I will introduce you to one of the best text-based file managers.

Features

The vifm file manager can move around your file system hierarchy, copy files, delete files, copy files, paste files, search…and that’s about it. What more do you really need from a file manager? But best of all, vifm does this all quickly and efficiently. Now, let’s install and use.

Installation

Naturally we will be installing from command line. To do this in an apt-get based distribution (such as Ubuntu or Debian), you would do the following:

1. Open up a terminal window.
2. Issue the command sudo apt-get install vifm.
3. Type your sudo password and hit Enter.
4. Accept any dependencies by clicking “y”.
5. Watch the installation happen.

In an rpm (or yum) based distribution (such as Fedora) you could install like so:

1. Open up a terminal window.
2. Su to the root user.
3. Enter the command yum install vifm.
4. Accept any dependencies by clicking “y”.
5. Watch the installation happen.

You are now ready to use vifm.

Usage

You open vifm by enter the command vifm from within the terminal window. When you open the file manager you will see a two-paned window (see Figure 1). What you see highlighted is what is currently active. So in the case of Figure 1 the ../ is active. The ../ string of characters means go to the parent directory. So if you hit enter while that is selected you will go to the parent directory of the current directory (in the case of Figure 1 that would be /home/).

To move up and down the directory hierarchy you use the up and down arrow keys. To move back and forth between the panes you use the Tab key.

As you would expect, vifm works similarly to the vi editor – it has key combinations to take care of tasks. The most useful of these are:

• yy – Yank a file (or “copy” in modern parlance).
• p – Put a file (or “paste” in modern parlance).
• dd – Delete a file.
• Enter – View a file (will not view binary files).
• / – Search for a file (the / character is followed by your search string).

So, let’s say you want to copy a file in one directory and paste it into another. Here’s the steps for that process:

1. Move the selection bar to the file you want to copy.
2. Hit “yy”.
3. Move the selection bar to the directory you want to copy the file to and hit Enter (you will then be inside of that directory).
4. Hit “p” and the file will copy.

It’s actually quite simple.

When you want to quit vifm you have to go into command mode (just like vi) and hit the “:” key, type quit, and hit Enter. And, like any good Linux tool, you can get more help with vifm by typing :help.

Final thoughts

If you need a text based file manager, you can’t go wrong with vifm. Granted you will have to learn a new set of key combinations (unless you’re already used to vi), but the speed and efficiency of vifm makes up for the few keystrokes you will have to learn.

One of the most under-appreciated aspects of Thunar is the ability to create custom actions. A custom action is a user-configure item that interacts with Thunar plugins so you can quickly take action on files within a directory. Say, for instance, you want to quickly print a file. Instead of having to open that file in the dedicated application, you simple right click a file and you will see a newly created Print File custom action that I am going to show you how to create.

Creating custom actions for Thunar will really make this file manager useful. Depending on how resourceful you are, you could create some really handy actions. Some of the more useful actions you can create are:

• Print a file.
• Finding files in current folder. NOTE: For this action you will need the gnome-search-tool installed.
• Manipulating archives.
• Playing audio files.
• Burning iso CDs from file.
• Set as background.

And so much more.

So now let’s take a look at how to create customized actions.

Figure 1

The first thing you need to do is open up Thunar. This will depend upon the window manager/desktop you are using. If you can’t figure out how to open up your file manager (it should be obvious) you can always open up a terminal window and issue the command thunar. When Thunar opens (see Figure 1) click on the Edit menu to reveal the Configure Custom Actions entry. Click on that entry to open the Custom Actions window.

Figure 2

By default you will most likely only see one action included, Open Terminal Here. As you can see, in Figure 2, I have two other custom actions created: Print File and Set As Background.

First let’s create the Print File action. Click on the “+” symbol to open the Add Action window (see Figure 3).

For the most part the configurations for the new action should be obvious. In the case of the Print File action we will be using the “lp” command in order to make this happen.

Figure 3

For the custom actions you can use anything for the Name and description. Remember, though, the Name will be what appears in the Right Click menu so you will want to keep that obvious and to the point.

Also notice the “%f” in the command line. As you can see the New (or edit) action window includes a listing of what each of these switches does.  This switch is crucial to the action, because without it the customized action will have no idea what file it is working on.

If you click on the Icon button a window will open with quite a few icons to choose from. If you don’t find what you are looking for in the window that opens, click the “Select Icon From” drop down and switch to a different listing. You should be able to find a suitable icon for your action.

Before you click OK click on the Appearance Condition tab. In this tab you have to select the file types which this action applies to. Obviously you will want to select Text Files. You could also select Image Files to print images as well.

Figure 4

After you fill out the necessary information, click OK and your action is complete. Now, navigate to a file within Thunar you want to print, right click the file, and behold the new menu entry “Print File” (see Figure 4).

Now let’s create an action that will make setting a background quick and painless. This will work for Window managers like Window Maker, Fluxbox, etc. This action requires the fbsetbg command. You will create this action similarly to the Print File command. In the “command” field you will enter:

fbsetbg %f

You will also want to select only Image Files from the Appearance Conditions tab. Click OK when you have completed this action. Now when you right click on any image within Thunar you will see an entry similar to what you configured for the Name of the set background action. In my case I named the action “Set As Background”. So when I right click an image in Thunar I see “Set As Background” listed. By clicking that the desktop wallpaper instantly changes to the image desired.

Final thoughts

The Thunar file manager is an outstanding entry in the file manager space. It is fast, reliable, user-friendly, and (with the help of custom actions) customizable. See what types of custom actions you can come up with. If you have a really handy one, share it with your fellow ghacks readers.

In this Linux Tips article I will show you how to view hidden files with ls, Thunar, Nautilus, and Dolphin.

LS

If you need to see hidden files using the ls command you need to add the -a switch. But if you just add the -a switch most likely your files will fly by you and you will miss what you are looking for. To avoid this pipe the command through the less command like so:

ls -a | less

The above command will allow you to page through the contents so you can actually see what is there. You can scroll either up or down using the arrow keys or you can scroll down one page at a time with the space bar.

Thunar

Figure 1

If you don’t know, Thunar is the file manager for the Enlightenment desktop. In order to see hidden files in Thunar click the View menu and check the Show Hidden Files box (as shown in Figure 1.) Or you can hit the key combination Ctrl-H.

If you use the key combination you must make sure you are focused on the Thunar window. When you set Thunar to view hidden files it will always do so until you unset this option.

Nautlius

Figure 2

Nautilus is the file manager for the GNOME desktop. With the Nautilus file manager viewing hidden files is done in the same way. From the View menu select the Show Hidden Files option (see Figure 2) or hit the key combination Ctrl-H. Like Thunar, if you use the key combination you must be focused on the Nautilus window.

And like Thunar, the hidden file option will stick until it is unset.

Dolphin

Figure 3

Dolphin is the KDE file manager that replaced Konqueror. In order to view hidden files in this file manager you select the View Hidden Files option from the View menu. You can also enable this action by hitting the Ctrl-. key combination. And like both Thunar and Nautilus, in order to use the key combination Dolphin must be in focus or the combination will not work.

Again, like the other graphical file managers, this option will remain until unset.

Final Thoughts

Hidden files are an important part of the Linux operating system. Although you can go your entire Linux lifetime without ever having to view a single hidden file, on that one occasion that you will need to do so, it’s good to know how.