Top 10 Free Linux File Managers

File managers essentially manage your file systems. They provide you with an interface through which you can easily organize and manage the files. It is through these file managers that you create, open,edit, view , search the files on your hard drive. There are diverse file managers that you can use to manage your files in Linux. If you are looking for the top quality free file managers for LINUX, here yo go.

Apart from the basic operations of files like create, open, edit, view , search etc File managers include several advanced features. Typically the file managers are equipped with upscale facilities that include synchronization of directory, handling archive, shortcuts, advanced search, file/folder comparisons, plugins, checksums, network connectivity, making it easier to manage the array of files.

Go through the features of the Top file managers and judge to see which suits you best

Endeavour Mark II

It’s a fully-equipped file management system that incorporates a number of features to make browsing easier. Endeavour includes Image Browser, File Browser, Archiver, Recycled Objects system, in addition to the set of file and disk management utility programs.

It comes with an intuitive interface that is easily controllable through mouse or keyboard.  The image browser allows all the basic features like preview, thumbnail, image rotation and zooming

Features

* Two pane tree & list style File Browser
* Image Browser with thumbs list and a pan & zoom image viewer
* Archiver for viewing, creating, and extracting packages
* Commercial quality user-interface design
* Convenient drag & drop operations
* Drag & drop downloading with the WGet Front End
* Extended MIME Types support with external import/export support for other MIME Type file formats
* Fully customizable tool bars and list headings
* A recycled objects system
* Device and disk utility programs:

Free Download

Nautilus

Its basically an open source manager. Managing the files and the system is easier with the graphical shells for the GNOME desktop environment.

With Nautilus you can configure the desktop and system according to your suitability. Its integrated interface makes it easier to access the network resources, browse the photo collection and much more. Nautilus is just the right file manager for great desktop experience.

Free Download

Features

* Bookmarks, window backgrounds, emblems, notes, addon scripts and has the choice between an icon or list view. It keeps a history of visited folders, similar to many web browsers, permitting easy access to previously visited folders
* Supports previews of files in their icons, be they text files, images, sound or video files via thumbnailers such as Totem
* Supports browsing local filesystems as well as FTP sites, Windows SMB shares, Files transferred over shell protocol, WebDAV servers and SFTP servers via GNOME VFS
* Integrated optional Beagle support
* Ability to save searches as virtual folders
* With the use of the Gamin library, Nautilus tracks modification of local files in real time, eliminating the need to refresh the display manually
* File compression
* ACL (access control list)
* Includes original vectorized icons

Free Download

Thunar

This a la mode file manager performs remarkably for Xfce Desktop Environment. Designed to start up faster than other file managers, its also more responsive. Basically it aims at fast clean and easy file management.
It incorporate various FreeDesktop.org standards that allows better integration with the current UNIX/Linux desktop world.

Features

* Functionality provided by plugins:
o Advanced Properties plugin - provces 2 additional pages for the file properties dialog (Image page - displays advanced properties of image files including Exif metainformation, and a simple editor for .desktop files)
o Archive Plugin - create and extract archive files
o Media Tags Plugin - provides an audio tag based renamer
o Bulk Renamer - allows users to easily rename multiple files at once using criterions that can be specified using the available renamer   plugins
o Additional Thumbnailers
o User Customizable Actions

Free Download

Dolphin

This file manager is centered on usability. For the KDE 4(latest version ) you get this file manager by default. It can also b used for KDE 3 optionally. Not to compete with Konqueror KDE’s default web browser, it is designed to achieve optimize file management. This implies, it allows the software to optimize the user interface for file management.

Features

* Sidebar
* Supports dockable panels for places, information, folders and a terminal
* Breadcrumb Navigation bar for URLs which allows users to navigate quickly through the file hierarchy
* 3 view modes (icon, list and column) with properties remembered for each folder
* Split views designed for file copy- and move-operations
* Network transparency
* Undo/redo functionality
* Support of service menus
* Zoom from 16 x 16 pixels to 256 x 256 pixels
* Tooltips show previews
* Thumbnails
* Panel tabs
* Renaming of a variable number of selected items in one step
* Supports: SMB/CIFS, WebDAV, NFS, FTP, and SSH
* Networked Environment for Personalized, Ontology-based Management of Unified Knowledge (NEPOMUK) integration

Free Download

Konqueror

It is designed to assist file management of local UNIX filesystem.
The file manager acts as an universal viewer that enables embedding read-only viewin components. So you can view documents without launching any other application.
An Open Source web browser with HTML 4.01 compatibility, it supports the Java applets, JavaScript, CSS 1, CSS 2.1, in addition to Netscape plugins like Flash or RealVideo plugins.

Features

* Displays files and directories using the “icon view” (three icon sizes) or the “tree view” (detailed view in which you can open sub-directories)
* Allows copying, moving and deleting, by direct drag and drop or by using copy, cut and paste
* Provides properties on a file, to see and change its attributes in a dialog box
* Automatic updating of directories
* Supports thumbnail preview of images
* Reads TXT, PDF, audio, and many other file types
* Browse ISO images
* Reads archive files such as zip, tar, gz
* Access Windows shares
* Audio CDs
* HTML 4.01 compliance
* ECMAscript 262 support (JavaScript)
* Ability to house Java applets
* Cascading Style Sheets:
o CSS 1: supported
o CSS 2.1: supported (paged media only partially supported)
o CSS 3 Selectors: supported
o CSS 3 (other)
* DOM1, DOM2 and partially DOM3 support in ECMAScript and native C++ bindings
* Full support for bidirectional scripts (arabic and hebrew)
* SSL support (requires OpenSSL)
* Uses KIO plugins to extend its capabilities well beyond those of other browsers and file managers. It uses components of KIO, the Konqueror I/O plugin system, to access different protocols such as HTTP and FTP (support for these protocols is built-in)
* Supports: SMB/CIFS, WebDAV, NFS, AFP, FTP, and SSH

Free Download

GNOME Commander

This is essentially a graphical file manager designed for the GNOME desktop environment. Its user interface is based on orthodox file Manager(OFM) principle.

The Software is aimed at more advanced users who prefer to focus on file management through file application and smart commands. This is not for those of you who wish to see weather forecast in the sidebars.

Features

* GTK-2 Graphical User Interface with standard mouse interactions
* GNOME mime types (MIME-Type management under development)
* Right click mouse menu with the usual file operations to run, open, open with, delete or rename files and folders, and also to set properties like ownership and permissions
* Mouse context menu that easily can be extended by entries calling any kind of external application like viewers, editors or custom scripts to work on selected files or directories
* Quick device access buttons with automatic mounting and unmounting
* Latest accessed folder history
* Fast file viewer for text, images and image meta data (Exif and IPTC)
* Tools for searching, quick file name search in current dir, symlinking, comparing directories
* A tool for advanced renaming of files supporting various types of meta-data
* Folder bookmarks
* File compression
* Plugin support
* Integrated command line
* Python scripting
* Supports: SMB/CIFS, WebDAV, NFS, FTP (using GnomeVFS ftp module), and SSH
* Support for 40 languages

Free Download

4Pane

As the name suggest it’s a four pane file manager offering detailed-list of files. this goes well with users looking for speedy file management rather than more visual effects. Apart from the standard functionality it allows advanced operations like multiple undo and redo of operations that includes deletions. It also encloses archive management allowing ‘virtual browsing’ inside archives.

All the directories and files are displayed in separate panes. Two pairs of these twin panes can be shown at a time. This is targeted at those of you who want a quick list-view of the files and easy navigation through a separate directory pane.

Features

* Highly configurable
* Multi-pane
* Standard file manager actions
* Multiple renaming / duplication of files
* Bookmarks
* Shortcuts
* Undo and Redo
* Archive management; Create and extract gzip, bzip2 and zip archives
* Browse archives
* Mount devices including DVD drives and USB keys
* Extensible; create user-defined tools

Free Download

PCMan File Manager

This file manager offers a tabbed interface. It focuses on a clean and slim interface without any bloats. This is your replacement for Thunar, Nautilus and Konqueror.

Most importantly its appearance can be modified to that of Microsoft Windows. So this can be a great tool for those of you shifting from Windows to Linux.

Features

* Extremely fast and lightweight
* Can be started in one second on a standard machine
* Tabbed browsing (similar to Firefox)
* Drag & Drop support
* Files can be dragged among tabs
* Load large directories in reasonable time
* File association support (Default application)
* Basic thumbnail support
* Bookmarks support
* Handles non-UTF-8 encoded file names correctly
* Provide icon view and detailed list view
* Mounting and unmounting the disks are supported through HAL
* Standard compliant (Follows FreeDesktop.org)
* Clean and user-friendly interface (GTK+ 2)

Free Download

Xfe

X File Explorer is a fast and small Microsoft Explorer or Commander like file manager. For those well expert with command line can use it achieve extremely quick results. Its easy to execute the terminal commands. Its easy to customize the desktop with Xfe. You can choose the Commander and Explorer styles according to your convenience.

Features

* Fast graphic user interface
* UTF-8 support (through the FOX 1.6 library)
* Commander/Explorer interface with four file manager modes : a) one panel, b) a directory tree and one panel, c) two panels, and d) a directory tree and two panels
* Integrated text editor (X File Write, xfw)
* Integrated text viewer (X File View, xfv)
* Integrated image viewer (X File Image, xfi)
* Integrated RPM or DEB packages viewer / installer / uninstaller (X File Package, xfp)
* Copy/cut/paste files from and to your favorite desktop (GNOME/KDE/XFCE)
* Drag and Drop in Xfe and from and to your favorite desktop
* Root mode
* Status line
* File associations
* Optional trash can for file delete operations
* Auto save registry
* Double click or single click files and directories navigation
* Right mouse click pop-up menu in tree list and file list
* Change file(s) attributes
* Mount/Unmount devices
* Toolbar
* Bookmarks (up to 20)
* Back and forward history lists for directory navigation
* Color themes (GNOME, KDE, Windows, …)
* Icons themes (XFE, GNOME, XFCE, …)
* Create / Extract archives (tar, zip, gzip, bzip2, compress, rar, lzh formats are supported)
* Tooltips with file properties
* Progress bars or dialogs for lengthy file operations
* Thumbnails image previews
* Ability to enqueue multimedia files (open command)
* Available in 17 languages (French, German, Brazilian Portuguese, Polish, Turkish, Catalan, Spanish, Argentinian Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Hungarian, Norwegian, Danish, Russian, Czech, Swedish, and Chinese)

Free Download

Worker

This file manager provides  you the files and directories in two separate panels. It can be either managed using keyboard or mouse. Worker recognizes the files based on both content and extension. The file manager  recognizes the common bytes in the sample files that you provide.

Features

* Drag’N'Drop support
* Built-in functions including:
o copy, move, rename, delete files
o create directory
o create/change symlinks
o chmod, chown
o and many more
* Built-in configuration GUI
* Support for a virtual file system to enter archives, ftp sites, etc
* Archives currently supported include tar/tgz/tbz, gzip, bzip2, zip, rar, ar and more from the extfs from Midnight Commander (lha, zoo, rpm, iso9660, diff, arj, cpio)
* Access servers using SSH, rsh, FTP, HTTP and WebDAV
* Text viewer
* File search
* Bookmarks for frequently used directories
* Flexible file type system with arbitrary file type actions for single file types or groups of types
* Context menu to access file type actions
* Labels can be assigned to entries to make it easier to find important files
* Filter file view by string pattern or label
* Assign any external command to buttons, hotkeys or filetypes (e.g. gimp, tar, diff, mount, …)
* UTF8 support
* Low requirements (only X11 libraries are required)

Free Download

With the top 10 free LINUX file manager on fore, you can evaluate the best that suits your needs.