Tuesday 7 May 2013

Using Nautilus file manager with Enlightenment window manager

I'm a fan of Bodhi Linux, which uses the Enlightenment window manager and is pretty speedy on all kinds of hardware. Unfortunately however, the built in file manager isn't yet fully functional in my opinion. As Dropbox has a dependency on Nautilus, I've integrated that into Enlightenment as the primary file manager.

To do this, we need to start Nautilus with the --no-desktop option. Start by making moving /usr/bin/nautilus to /usr/bin/nautilus.original, and create a new script at /usr/bin/nautilus containing the following command:
 #!/bin/bash  
 nautilus.original --no-desktop $@ &  

The $@ expands any passed arguments, allowing the use of the script as if it were the original Nautilus binary.

To ensure Enlightenment uses only Nautilus, we need to disable the integrated file manager from the Modules settings (Run Everything -> Modules -> Files). Disable EFM (Starter) and EFM Operation Info and close the settings window.

If you use the Places module, either on the desktop or in a panel, you'll also want to ensure that this launches Nautilus instead of the integrated file manager. To do this, right-click on the gadget, then go to Settings.  Finally, select Use a custom file manager and enter nautilus in the box.

And we're done - we're now using Nautilus as a replacement for the Enlightenment File Manager.


References:[Crunchbang Forums: Make nautilus --no-desktop default.]