Using Windows Explorer

You might need to be logged on as an administrator or a member of the Administrators group in order to perform some tasks.

Windows Explorer displays the hierarchical structure of files, folders, and drives on your computer. It also shows any network drives that have been mapped to drive letters on your computer. Using Windows Explorer, you can copy, move, rename, and search for files and folders. For example, you can open a folder that contains a file you want to copy or move, and then drag the file to another folder or drive.

There are other places in Windows where you can view and work with files and folders. My Documents is a convenient place to store documents, graphics, or other files you want to access quickly. You can also view My Network Places, which lists other computers that are connected to your local area network (LAN). When you delete files or folders from your hard disk, Windows places them in the Recycle Bin, where you can retrieve them, until you empty the Recycle Bin. Files or folders deleted from a floppy disk or a network drive are permanently deleted and are not sent to the Recycle Bin.

To open Windows Explorer, click Start, point to Programs, point to Accessories, and then click Windows Explorer.

For more information, click Related Topics.

The first file browser of interest is Nautilus. This is the default file browser on most Linux systems.

This display is showing the folders in list view. I perfer it since you can expand the tree by clicking the arrow next to the folder name. If you use icon view it will open a separate window for each folder.

Here is a description from Gnome Documentation Library

The Nautilus file manager provides a simple and integrated way to manage your files and applications. You can use the file manager to do the following:

The file manager lets you organize your files into folders. Folders can contain files and may also contain other folders. Using folders can help you find your files more easily.

Nautilus also manages the desktop. The desktop lies behind all other visible items on your screen. The desktop is an active component of the way you use your computer.

EmelFM2 is an interesting 2 pane file browser.

Here are some highlights from the User manual available at EmelFM2 User Guide

Worker is a file manager for the X Window System on UN*X.

Here is a list of the attributes as listed on the Worker home page Worker File Manager

This is the new, slightly simpler, home page for gentoo, the GTK+ file manager. The old site design has served well, but it was time for a refresh for the new 0.15.x series of gentoo. This new version of gentoo is based on the current 2.x series of the GTK+ toolkit, finally bringing gentoo into the present (the last version of GTK 1.2 was released in 2001). It's good to be back.

Here is a list of the attributes as listed on the Gentoo home page Gentoo File Manager

X File Explorer (Xfe) is an MS-Explorer or Commander like file manager for X. It is based on the popular, but discontinued, X Win Commander, originally developed by Maxim Baranov. Xfe is developed since 2002 by Roland Baudin, a french Linux enthusiast.

Here is a list of the features from XFE feature page.

This is a different file browser since it is text based.

Overview

The screen of the Midnight Commander is divided into four parts. Almost all of the screen space is taken up by two directory panels. By default, the second line from the bottom of the screen is the shell command line, and the bottom line shows the function key labels. The topmost line is the menu bar line. The menu bar line may not be visible, but appears if you click the topmost line with the mouse or press the F9 key.

The Midnight Commander provides a view of two directories at the same time. One of the panels is the current panel (a selection bar is in the current panel). Almost all operations take place on the current panel. Some file operations like Rename and Copy by default use the directory of the unselected panel as a destination (don't worry, they always ask you for confirmation first). For more information, see the sections on the Directory Panels, the Left and Right Menus and the File Menu.

You can execute system commands from the Midnight Commander by simply typing them. Everything you type will appear on the shell command line, and when you press Enter the Midnight Commander will execute the command line you typed; read the Shell Command Line and Input Line Keys sections to learn more about the command line.

Mouse Support

The Midnight Commander comes with mouse support. It is activated whenever you are running on an xterm(1) terminal (it even works if you take a telnet, ssh or rlogin connection to another machine from the xterm) or if you are running on a Linux console and have the gpm mouse server running.

When you left click on a file in the directory panels, that file is selected; if you click with the right button, the file is marked (or unmarked, depending on the previous state).

Double-clicking on a file will try to execute the command if it is an executable program; and if the extension file has a program specified for the file's extension, the specified program is executed. Also, it is possible to execute the commands assigned to the function key labels by clicking on them.

If a mouse button is clicked on the top frame line of the directory panel, it is scrolled one page up. Likewise, a click on the bottom frame line will cause scrolling one page down. This frame line method works also in the Help Viewer and the Directory Tree.

The default auto repeat rate for the mouse buttons is 400 milliseconds. This may be changed to other values by editing the ~/.mc/ini file and changing the mouse_repeat_rate parameter.

If you are running the Midnight Commander with the mouse support, you can get the default mouse behavior (cutting and pasting text) by holding down the Shift key.

For our January 2010 meeting we are planning on having an Install Fest. If you bring in your computers we will help you install Ubuntu on them.

Before you bring in your computer we would like to ask you to do a test on your computer. This will help us make sure the computer is capable of running Ubuntu.

Please download the installation CD from Ubuntu Download and burn it to a CD. There is help for burning a CD available at Burning ISO Howto.

Next we would ask you to try to boot from the CD. This is on the second screen listed as: Try Ubuntu without any change to your computer. If your computer boots and runs from the CD we can probably perform the install. But if the computer will not run from the CD we might not be able to install Ubuntu on that machine.

Finally if you would like to get an overview of the install process have a look at Graphical Install for Ubuntu.