Keyboard Shortcuts

The developers mainly based navigation on Norton Commander or the text-based Midnight Commander [3]. For example, you can press the Tab key to toggle between the two directory panes.

The original design is also reflected in function key assignments such as F3 for the file viewer or F5 for copy.

If you prefer a mouse-oriented approach, Gnome Commander does give you this option. Double-clicking a directory makes changes to that directory.

A Nautilus-style address bar above the directory content is also very useful because it gives users a simple option for climbing up the directory tree. You can just click the required directory name to do so.

Remote Servers

In a world of global networks, modern file managers need to let users access all kinds of remote resources, such as WebDAV, ftp, SSH, and SMB.

The version tested for this article, version 1.2.6 from early June, supported ftp and SMB, with SSH and DAV support to follow shortly, according to the developers.

SMB and Ftp

By clicking the corresponding buttons, you can conveniently browse SMB shares – Gnome Commander will then show you the locations it has discovered.

For ftp access, go to the Connections menu, select New Connection, and type the server name (such as ftp.gnome.org) and, optionally, a directory name (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Easily connect to ftp with Gnome Commander.

For ftp servers that require a user login, select FTP (with Login) in the Service type combobox; in addition, type your user name and password.

If you would like to store an ftp server connection in the program, click Remote Server in the same menu. If everything works out, you will see a button with an alias below the toolbox; now you will be able to access the resource directly.