GNOME’s Nautilus file manager is finally matching the behavior of other file managers like KDE’s Dolphin and Xfce’s Thunar with a keyboard shortcut for copying and pasting files.
This Week in GNOME highlighted a notable albeit one could argue long overdue change for GNOME Files / Nautilus: Ctrl+Insert and Shift+Insert support for copying and pasting files.
I swapped to nemo, I like the plugins like the built in terminal
i use CTRL C and CTRL V … What am I missing here?
Nothing if that works for you, but sometimes I end up using Ctrl+Insert / Shift+Insert a lot because I am doing a lot of things in the terminal and Ctrl+C has a different meaning there, so it is nice for Ctrl+Insert / Shift+Insert to work everywhere for when I have it in my muscle memory.
TIL I always used Ctrl+shift+v
This keybind could help save me confusion when I switch between pasting in terminal and pasting in browser.
I’m guessing it’s for those godforsaken left-handed mousers.
Wait wait wait. Are you saying/implying that there has been a better way to copy paste for lefties with using ctrl/shift insert all this time? I waste so much time with shifting my left hand from the Mouse!
Essentially nothing. They copied the shortcuts from Thunar and Dolphin for copy paste.
I’m a gnome guy but always swap to Thunar on a fresh install.
What’s better with Thunar?
It’s probably just that I got used to it with XFCE at some point. My main two concerns:
- I love having the path in the navbar (and not have to Ctrl-L)
- I don’t like having devices tucked behind “Other Locations” rather than in the sidebar
Otherwise, I find Nautilus much more aesthetically pleasing.
Agree that Nautilus is the most beautiful/clean, but almost the least functional. Maybe those two are in fact inversely proportional, eh.
I haven’t used Nautilus in ages, so I can’t say for certain, but Thunar is a more traditional-feeling file manager. It feels more like an older version of the Windows file manager but with tabs, while Nautilus seems more Mac-like.
Can Thunar run under Wayland or nah? (Just curious, I don’t want to actually use it.)
Yes. In fact, almost every XFCE component can ran on Wayland now. At this point, they’re just a few bugs to hash out and figuring out what they’ll actually use for the compositor.
https://wiki.xfce.org/releng/wayland_roadmap
From what it sounds like, there will be a somewhat usable Wayland release in late 2026 alongside X11, and I imagine we’ll get a more polished release in late 2028.
Nice, well done to the developers!
Everything runs under Wayland. That should be your default expectation.
At this point, Wayland is the preferred environment for GTK and Qt apps. Unless the app is exploiting some specific aspect of X11, all GTK (3 and up) and Qt (5 and up) apps work fine under Wayland.
As for other toolkits, FLTK, Electron, and SDL apps run in Wayland too.
And by “preferred”, I mean that these apps (like Thunar) will run natively on Wayland even if Xwayland is available.
There are Wayland only toolkits now but not really any “modern” toolkits that do not support Wayland. When Thunar gets ported to GTK5, it will be Wayland only.
Obviously ancient x11 specific stuff like XCB or Athena, and things built on them like Motif will require Xwayland or Xsatellite. So if you want to run, xv or motif nedit, you need those. This list includes GTK2 as well. But even they work well enough you may not notice. I mean, xeyes won’t track your mouse I guess.
And just in case mentioning xeyes brings out the Wayland critics, you can build an xeyes app that works in Wayland. I think the Wayland Maker compositor project has one for example (WindowMaker in Wayland).
Obviously ancient x11 specific stuff
Well yeah… I was kind of asking whether Thunar is one of those things that haven’t transitioned to a Wayland-enabled framework. Maybe it’s still using GTK3 or something.
Btw, is GTK5 in the works?? 😀
What’s actually missing from Nautilus and the GNOME file picker is a sane sort by type where the subsorting is by name, and not whatever GNOME chooses
The most exciting new thing in Gnome is a new shortcut in Nautilus. What has happened to the project?
With all the bleating about how GNOME does not listen to users, these kinds of little quality of life improvements may be more significant than you think. Let’s hope we see more of them.
Most of the exciting GNOME changes are in mutter rather than the shell.
This release we got a lot of efficiency and performance improvements which are exciting but not news headline clickbait exciting.
I’ve read about deletion of x11 support entirely. I hope this will lead to more focus on wayland protocols.
If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it.
I’ve heard “If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it.” WAY TOO MANY times.
If it ain’t broken, it can be better; improve it.I have to use too many extensions to make it usable. When we’ll get proper multi monitor support with top bar settings?
What’s wrong with multi monitor?
Gnome has been my example as the best multimonitor experience. It’s more reliable than even my work Mac when working with mixed DPI and multiple displays.
I have to use “fullscreen avoider” and “multi-monitor panel” extensions.
The first moves the top panel to the second monitor if there’s a fullscreen window on the first.
The second creates another top panel on all the others monitor.
Since them are in effect different panels, others extensions doesn’t show up on secondary monitor’s top panel (like for example audio mixer). So by using “fullscreen avoider” I have those extensions on the secondary monitor while I’m gaming or watching a video.
Probably never.
Also, if you’re using so many extensions you might as well use another DE.I know. I’m coming from xfce and tried plasma. I have to get used to plasma so I’m trying it on laptop but for now it’s messy.
It’s gnome, it was likely broken deliberately in the name of “simplicity”
The sad thing is that this is true. They removed entirely all settings related to dash in name of simplicity.
🤣
Reaching feature stability? It’s been around for decades.
