File Managers

Background

A computer operating system (OS) consists of numerous and various files arranged in directories. As you use a computer you may add files of your own such as written documents, music, or photos. This article is about organizing and managing files you acquire.

File managers provide a graphical user interface (GUI) to manage files and directories (folders). Windows Explorer and the Mac OS X Finder are file managers used with Windows and Mac OS X platforms. With Linux abounding in variety naturally any number of file managers are available. Which file manager is best is a matter of what functionality is needed and how one likes to work. Older computers with low system resources are served well by such file managers as PCManFM, Thunar, and Marlin. You'll find one or more of these available on our library computers. The examples used here focus on PCManFM although thunar and marlin behave similarly.

What do they do?

The most common operations performed on files or groups of files with a file manager include viewing, opening, editing, and playing files as well as renaming, moving or copying, deleting and searching. Advanced tasks like modifying file attributes, properties and file permissions can also be carried out in a file manager.