Openbox and Nautilus

[Taco.22]

Just out of curiosity I removed Thunar from an older version of Scorpio and installed Nautilus and gvfs, including backends.  Nautilus only took up about 25mbs of space.  Scorpio is Openbox with conky and urxvt embedded in the "desktop", and with no panel.  It also uses hsetroot to set wallpaper.  Nautilus has no control of the "desktop".

So far it is all going extremely smoothly.  No takeover of the "desktop" - no hijacking of anything.  RAM usage is only up by eight or nine at idle.  Nautilus is quick, also has tabs, is easy to configure into lists (my preferred layout) and has one big thing going for it - it has built-in support for network shares.  Simply click on File - Connect to Server and away you go.

I'm going to run this for a while and see how it pans out.  It works really well with Pytyle, and seems rock solid.  The one thing I miss about Thunar though is the ease of creating custom actions, although I am currently looking at Nautilus-actions configurations.  Stay tuned.   

[melodie]

I had tried this setup in pclos openbox a little more than one year ago, and even with nautilus having no hold on the desktop, after a while it didn't go the way I wanted, but I don't quite remember what now. I had posted at the openbox section of the pclos forum...

Anyhow time has gone, and now Nautilus is probably a different version number.

[Taco.22]

Yes, I read your thread in Linuxgator just an hour ago! 

I have done some more with Nautilus.  It now no longer controls the desktop by default - to do that you must install gnome-tweak-tool.  So Nautilus on its own is just another FM.  I also installed Nautilus-actions that allows you to create custom menu items - mind you that was nearly another 25megs!!  However I can now "Edit file as root" and "Open folder as root" as I can with Thunar.  Oh, and I also rediscovered that Nautilus has the option of twin pane!

I did try the gnome-tweak-tool, and it worked fine.  Conky, docker and embedded urxvt all still worked, and desktop icons appeared.  The only snag was that I lost the OB right-click menu - there might be a way around that but it could be a battle.  I'll have a go anyway - all in the name of science!!

Still, even if I can't get the OB menu working, it would make a great base for an LXDE-type build.  Just drop in a panel and there you go.  You can leave out the nautilus-actions and save 24mb - Nautilus is about 25mb and gnome-tweak-tool was only about 9mb.  Not too bad for a "desktop" with wallpaper and icons and network shares out of the box!

[Taco.22]

One way (probably the only way!) to get a mouse click root menu with Nautilus is to remap the deskbinding in rc.xml so that the middle button becomes the "right click".  Works well - middle click gives root menu, right click gives Nautilus desktop menu.  I also gave a keybinding to that so that a keyboard command also shows the root menu.

The only issue I can't seem to get around is that of getting Nautilus to set desktop wallpaper - the right click menu option doesn't work.  I have tried just about every known suggestion on how to get Nautilus out of its comfort zone to set wallpaper, but I haven't cracked it yet.  Openbox paints to the root "desktop" and Nautilus floats above that.  And I'm not installing 150mb of Gnome Control Panel to do it!  At that point - walk away!!

Anyway, onwards and upwards!

[melodie]

I didn't remember I had talked about it a Linuxgator, only at the main pclos forum. I also had modified it to not manage the desktop, but I didn't know about gnome tweak tools so I had used gconf-editor after I searched the web to find out how to reconfigure it.

And still, after some time, there were things which I didn't like, because it was not what I expected, but as I tell you I don't remember what it was.

[melodie]

The only issue I can't seem to get around is that of getting Nautilus to set desktop wallpaper - the right click menu option doesn't work.

I do not understand you : do you want it to manage the desktop, or do you want it to NOT manage the desktop ? ;-)

[Taco.22]

For your future reference, this is the thread you started at PCLOS and the thread at Linuxgator.

Regarding the setting of wallpaper in Nautilus as a "desktop manager" - the Nautilus right click menu offers the option of setting wallpaper.  However clicking on it does nothing.  I have tried all sorts of tricks that I have read about regarding files in /usr/bin that try to fake gnome-appearance-properties or gnome-control-panel.  No go.  Even tried setting the background with a similar trick to Thunar by using feh and a custom nautilus-action.  The main problem is that Openbox sets the background on the root window, and Nautilus has this "desktop" overlay.  You can tell because the root background, be it set by feh or hsetroot, is visible through conky - the rest of the "desktop" remains unchanged.  Doing a full install of gnome-control-panel will apparently fix that, but at 150mb it makes the whole Openbox/Nautilus combo pointless.  It then becomes a cutdown Gnome system with OB as WM - and it will only bloat more.

I have arrived at the same conclusion I arrived at when doing this at PCLOS just over a year ago - Nautilus as a "desktop manager" is way too heavy.  However what has changed since then is that Nautilus is now able to work as a standalone FM without trying to takeover the "desktop", and as such it really has a lot going for it.  It's very configurable, seems quicker than Thunar on the same hardware, has a bigger download than Thunar but not as big as Spacefm, and has the built-in network share that works straight out of the box.  Oh, and the custom "Set image as wallpaper" with feh works fine, just as with Thunar!

Not sure, but I feel this one could be a keeper.  Might make it standard in Scorpio - got to make it a bit different to VillageBox!!

[melodie]

Agreed : less bloat is better, and a file manager providing rich features is also desirable. I will be looking forward to your progress in this direction and I thank you for have searched for the threads.