“While firmly established as a server solution, Linux still
faces an uphill climb to unseat Windows on the desktop. Two core
issues have hindered Linux: A paucity of business applications and
the lack of a user-friendly interface. The former issue is likely
to be addressed over time, but with Eazel’s Nautilus, the latter
seems all but solved. Although the X Window System GUI has served
capably as the basis for a number of useful Linux interfaces such
as GNOME and KDE, none has proved to be the much-anticipated
“Windows killer.” Nautilus, a file manager for the GNOME
desktop, mixes familiar components from other graphical interfaces
with some leading-edge features that not only match Windows but
also go one-up on the incumbent desktop dominator.“
“Nautilus offers essentially the same functionality as Windows
Explorer, Macintosh Finder, and GNU Midnight Commander (GMC) for
Linux by providing access to hard disk files. Intended as a
replacement for GMC, Nautilus offers a host of improvements over
GMC and other Linux file managers.”
“Like Explorer, Nautilus has a two-paned display, with the usual
suspects among the menu choices, File, Edit, Layout, and so on. But
closer inspection reveals how Nautilus makes file identification
easier. Instead of associating a file type with a generic
icon,Nautilus displays the contents of a file when possible, saving
you the trouble of launching an app just to identify a file. For
instance, an image file’s icon is simply a thumbnail preview of the
image itself, while a text file’s icon displays several lines of
text from the document. In addition, Nautilus features a
configurable zoom level that lets you adjust the amount of detail
displayed by these icons. It also allows you to view files as
icons, as a file list, or, in the case of MP3 audio files, as a
playlist with an embedded miniature MP3 player below it. Nautilus
even lets you preview MP3 files by playing a bit of the file when
you hover the cursor over the icon.”