Other people have given great reasons, but I will also mention that as someone who lives inside the terminal it’s often faster and easier to open it right there rather than getting a GUI one going. I do still use one for things that are easier to do with a graphical file manager though, no problem having both
I can’t believe no one mentioned this, but: remote access.
I spend most of my day connected to machines via SSH and yazi offers a great UX with file previews and all. Using kitty I even get image previews in the terminal.
To be fair, X11 forwarding is a straightforward thing, bearing in mind any security/performance/administrative restrictions which may apply to your situation.
Alternatively, SSHFS can be used to mount a remote directory locally.
I can navigate without using my mouse. It’s faster for me. You can create tabs, copy and paste files, extract compressed files, run commands, and so much more without lofting my hand. My favorite feature is the ability to preview files without even opening them. I’m relatively new to linux too.
Download 5 seasons of some show from multiple sources or some artist’s entire discography, and want to normalize all the file names? It is way easier in the terminal.
I’ll check this out, but I use https://github.com/stevearc/oil.nvim for such tasks as I have nvim’s full suite of editor commands to rename all the files way faster than I could in a GUI. I’m sure there are GUI apps to perform a similar task, but I already know how to use nvim.
Terminal file manager are useful on a server over ssh.
ripgrep and fd support is better than any GUI file manager find and replace.
Some people like using vim keybindings
The three panel view is really useful. On the left is the parent folder, the middle the current and on the right a preview, e.g. the selected folder or the contents of a picture or a text file. It’s faster to navigate and pop back into the shell.
You can probably do some more advance tasks via CLI. Also usually lists information faster. But honestly you will be overall fine with GUI a majority of the time.
I wouldn’t bother unless you find yourself doing more through the terminal than through GUIs.
I don’t have a built-in file browser (not using a DE, just i3 window manager), so I use ranger and pure GNU coreutils commands mostly but I still find myself missing the drag-and-drop features that FreeDesktop integration provides for stuff like nautilus.
As someone new to Linux, what would be a few reasons that you prefer this to using the built-in GUI file browser?
Other people have given great reasons, but I will also mention that as someone who lives inside the terminal it’s often faster and easier to open it right there rather than getting a GUI one going. I do still use one for things that are easier to do with a graphical file manager though, no problem having both
I can’t believe no one mentioned this, but: remote access.
I spend most of my day connected to machines via SSH and yazi offers a great UX with file previews and all. Using kitty I even get image previews in the terminal.
Well, do you prefer kitty or yazi?
They are two different things. Yazi is a file manager and Kitty is a terminal emulator.
Ok, Dolphin would be the comparative here from KDE Qt but, since is made for GTK probably Nautilus is the one to be compared.
To be fair, X11 forwarding is a straightforward thing, bearing in mind any security/performance/administrative restrictions which may apply to your situation.
Alternatively, SSHFS can be used to mount a remote directory locally.
I’ve used plenty of sshfs a few years ago, but x11 forwarding is a compromise. The latency makes it painful to work with for more than a few minutes.
Yeah, X11 forwarding is only fine on a campus wide network, maybe city-wide at most, if the wan is fast enough.
Sshfs would also be painful for operations processing a lot of data (grepping gigs of log files or even creating thumbnails of images to browse).
Do image previews work over SSH? I admit I’ve never actually tried it…
they do
I can navigate without using my mouse. It’s faster for me. You can create tabs, copy and paste files, extract compressed files, run commands, and so much more without lofting my hand. My favorite feature is the ability to preview files without even opening them. I’m relatively new to linux too.
Download 5 seasons of some show from multiple sources or some artist’s entire discography, and want to normalize all the file names? It is way easier in the terminal.
I’ll check this out, but I use https://github.com/stevearc/oil.nvim for such tasks as I have nvim’s full suite of editor commands to rename all the files way faster than I could in a GUI. I’m sure there are GUI apps to perform a similar task, but I already know how to use nvim.
You can probably do some more advance tasks via CLI. Also usually lists information faster. But honestly you will be overall fine with GUI a majority of the time.
Some people just like being in the terminal.
I wouldn’t bother unless you find yourself doing more through the terminal than through GUIs.
I don’t have a built-in file browser (not using a DE, just i3 window manager), so I use ranger and pure GNU coreutils commands mostly but I still find myself missing the drag-and-drop features that FreeDesktop integration provides for stuff like nautilus.
I’m fairly new to Linux also, Debian with Gnome.
I need CLI filemanager when doing something outside home directory etc.
For example fix a desktop shortcut and you can’t start Nautilus "as an administrator " afaik. Or it won’t ask for root password.