Being able to navigate your local filesystem is an important function of personal computing. File managers have come a long way since early directory editors like DIRED. While they aren’t cutting-edge technology, they are essential software to manage any computer.
File management consists of creating, opening, renaming, moving / copying, deleting and searching for files. But file managers also frequently offer other functionality.
In the field of desktop environments, there are two desktops that dominate the open source landscape: KDE and GNOME. They are smart, stable, and generally stay out of the way. These use the widget toolkits Qt and GTK respectively. And there are many excellent Qt and GTK file managers available.
There are also a wide range of graphical non-Qt and non-Gtk file managers available. This article examines 11 such file managers. The quality is remarkably good.
Here’s our verdict captured in a legendary LinuxLinks-style ratings chart. Only free and open source software is included.
Click the links in the table below to learn more about each file manager.
| Graphical File Managers (Non-Qt, Non-GTK) | |
|---|---|
| Spacedrive | File manager powered by a virtual distributed filesystem |
| Xfe | MS-Explorer or Commander like file manager for X |
| muCommander | File manager with a dual-pane interface |
| Cloud Commander | Cloud file manager with console and editor |
| far2l | Linux fork of FAR Manager v2 |
| Xplorer | Modern file explorer written in TypeScript |
| Sigma File Manager | Quickly evolving, modern file manager |
| trolCommander | Fork of muCommander |
| TkDesk | Tcl/Tk-based file manager |
| System G | File manager with git support |
| Worker | File manager in the style of Amiga’s DirOpus |
This article has been revamped in line with our recent announcement.
 Explore our comprehensive directory of recommended free and open source software. Our carefully curated collection spans every major software category.This directory is part of our ongoing series of informative articles for Linux enthusiasts. It features hundreds of detailed reviews, along with open source alternatives to proprietary solutions from major corporations such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. You’ll also find interesting projects to try, hardware coverage, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. Know a useful open source Linux program that we haven’t covered yet? Let us know by completing this form. |
You forgot to add Xplorer to the list.
Yes, apologies for the oversight. We reviewed this file manager back in October 2023.
This roundup has been updated to include Xplorer.
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