This article is part 9 of an ongoing series of articles on this site comparing Apple Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" to Red Hat Linux Fedora Core 4 (FC4).  (The previous article is here.)  The point of this comparison is not to say that one OS or the other is "better" but rather to point out the differences and indicate where an artist who previously used Mac OS X 10.4 would find Linux to be easier, harder, or the same to use as the Mac. See the introduction article for more information and links to the other articles in the series.   Although the focus of this series  is on the needs of designers, artists, and content creators, the content should be relevant to any number of Mac users or Linux users.

This installment will examine the file browsing or "exploring" or "Finder-like" features of Mac OS X 10.4 and Red Hat FC4.  While it is possible that some features of the file browing capabilities on both platforms may unintentionally be overlooked in this article, it will attempt to be fairly comprehensive so as to provide a fair picture of each operating system's capabilities.

The Mac OS X Finder

When I first started using a Mac, back in the Windows 3.1 days and before Linux was much of anything to look at, the Macintosh "Finder" (or file explorer) was one of the coolest thngs I'd ever seen.  I didn't have to remember some cryptic command syntax to see what files were saved on my computer.  I didn't need to know what kind of a program created a particular file, because I could open the file in the right application with a couple clicks of the mouse.  It was a thing of beauty.  Today's OS X Finder has done very little to improve upon what I was using all those years ago.

When browsing for files in the OS X Finder, there are three different views that might be used.  First is the icon view, which is probably the one most Mac users seem to prefer:

In this view, Mac OS X presents a two-paned window with a toolbar across the top.  At the top of the left-hand pane is a list of the drives (disk volumes) on the system, including network volumes.  At the bottom of the left-hand pane is a "quick link" to each of the major locations a user might want to browse, including their desktop, their personal home directory (since I was logged in as "admin" at the time, that's the home directory we see there), as well as their documents, music, movies, and pictures directories.  The toolbar across the top provides "back" and "forward" browsing through directories and volumes, the next three buttons switch the view in use in the Finder from icon to file list to 3-pane view, and for the item(s) selected in the Finder, the next button allows the user to perform an "action" against the files/folders from a pre-defined list:

To the right is a Spotlight search box, allowing the user to look for files that cannot be easily browsed to.  At the bottom of the window is a count of the number of items in the current folder/directory, as well as an estimate of the free space available on the volume being browsed.  At the very top of the window is displayed the name of the volume or directory currently being displayed in the icon view pane.  By command-clicking on this name, the user may navigate upward in the folder hierarchy above the currently displayed folder.

In addition to the icon view in the Finder, there is also the "list" view (which is my personal favorite):

This is virtually identical to icon view, except that the folders and files are displayed in an organized list rather than a jumbled mess of icons.  By clicking the "triangle" to the left of a folder in the list, the user can expand the list to include a display of the contents of that folder, indented slightly.

The third Finder view is the "3-pane View":

This view is very similar to the list view, except that as the user navigates further down the directory hierarchy, the new level appears in the next right-hand-most pane.  Once all 3 panes are filled, further navigation causes the two left-most panes to shift left by one column to make room for the next directory level in the right-most pane of the window.

As with earlier Mac OS releases, OS X supports the same kind of "double click to open the file in an application" functionality that other operating systems do.  And like the more modern operating systems, users can right-click or option-click on a file to choose to open it in a different application than the one it was created by. 

Items in the list view can be sorted various ways by clicking on the column header.  For example, clicking on the file name header lists the files and folders in alphabetical order.  Clicking it again shuffles the list to display it in reverse alphabetical order.  The same for size, file type, etc.

Finder Customization in OS X 

The Finder offers a decent amount of customization.  For example, the toolbar can be customized to contain additional buttons which provide functions not normally shown in the toolbar, but which might be of value to the user. 

The user might include a "Burn" button to burn the contents of a file or folder to CD or DVD, an "Eject" button to unmount removable media, or a "Get Info" button to display the detailed information available about a given file or folder (e.g., its size, creation date, UNIX permissions, etc.).  Even the way the toolbar buttons are displayed is customizable.

Additional customization is possible in the Finder menus accessible from the top of the screen while in the Finder or at the Desktop.  For instance, the following options determine which icons display on the desktop and other features:

 Since the Finder allows a user to "label" (or "color code") a particular file or folder to make it easier to identify visually in Finder displays, it is also possible to specify the meanings of the different color codes:

The Sidebar at the left of Finder windows can also be customized to include only those buttons of value to the user, from among those available:

 And finally, the user may choose to display all file extensions and optionally disable the warning that appears when the Trash is about to be emptied.

This is a pretty substantial amount of customization, though the majority of it is relatively simple.  It generally consists of what buttons are available and how items are displayed or labeled.  The base functionality of the Finder changes little, if at all, regardless of the options chosen in these menus.

Most of the Finder menus contain the usual sort of file and window management functions, such as duplicating a file, creating an alias (or shortcut or symbolic link) to a file, printing a file, etc.  There are a few noteworthy items, however.  For instance, the file menu contains these commands:

Of particular note in the above menu are the following functions (which we'll discuss in a moment):

Burn Folders are simply a way to help users organize the files they are about to burn to a CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R, or DVD-RW.  The user creates a "Burn Folder" and copies the desired files into that folder, like they would copy files to any other folder.  Rather than moving or copying the files to this folder, OS X creates an alias (link) back to the original file.  Once the user has gathered all the files together that are to be burned to disc, the user can select the Burn Folder in the Finder, click the File menu's "Burn Disc" command, and begin burning the data to the desired medium.  OS X will even help the user choose which medium might be best (CD or DVD) depending on the amount of data involved.

The "Go" menu also contains an item or two worthy of note:

Of particular interest in this discussion are the "Go to Folder..." and "Connect to Server..." commands.  Most of the others are available in the Finder window and its toolbar.

"Go to Folder" allows the user to specify the name or path to a specific fiolder on the system.  The Finder will automatically seek out and open that folder in a Finder window.

"Connect to Server" provides a primitive GUI interface to the various servers available on the user's network:

By entering a server address in URL form, the user can connect to it and mount it as an icon on the desktop.  This window recognizes FTP addresses, Apple FileSharing Protocol (AFP) addresses, Windows/Samba Server Message Block (SMB) addresses, and others.  After entering the URL, the user may be prompted for the authentication information needed to connect to that resource.  Commonly used server addresses can be added to the "Favorite Servers" list by clicking the "+" button next to the server address box.  It's also possible to browse the network for a particular server by clicking the Browse button.

The rest of the OS X Finder features are pretty commonplace among modern GUI interfaced operating systems, so I'm not going to cover them, such as dragging a file from one disk to another to copy it, clicking on the name to rename the file, etc.

It should be clear that Apple has gone to quite a bit of trouble to make the OS X Finder a friendly and easily customizable tool for Macintosh users.

Red Hat's Gnome Nautilus File Explorer

Since the Gnome desktop in Red Hat FC4 is the default on my system and is where I've spent the majority of my time, the "Nautilus" file explorer (the equivalent to the OS X Finder) is where I'm going to focus most of this discussion of Linux file browsing.  I am, however, going to briefly look at the KDE desktop and its Konqueror file manager later, to show that there are other options.

Nautilus can be most easily accessed by double-clicking the "Computer" icon on the Gnome desktop, then double-clicking a volume icon, such as "filesystem".  This will result in a display resembling the following:

A Mac user's initial reaction to this window is probably going to be one of shock and revulsion.  Instead of the fancy metallic eye candy that Apple has seduced them with, this window is pretty clean, simple, and straightforward.  It borrows elements from Windows XP (the 3 buttons for minimizing, maximizing, and closing the window), Windows 3.x (the larger menu typefaces, more-basic looking display, and larger font sizes), and perhaps a touch of Mac OS 9 and/or X.  Their initial reaction is probably to dismiss the interface outright, but they should be a bit more open-minded.  Just because it looks a bit different doesn't mean there isn't a pretty elegant user interface hidden here.

In Nautilus, just as in OS X, you can double-click a file to open it with its default application.  You can double-click a folder or volume to view its contents.  The button in the bottom-left of the Nautilus window serves the same function as right-clicking the folder name in the Finder, allowing you to navigate upward through the directory hierarchy above the current folder.  And just as in OS X, the bottom bar of the window displays the number of items in the current folder and the free space if the display is within a filesystem.  The only thing really missing between this window and the OS X Finder is the toolbar and the glitzy Apple graphics.  As we'll see in a moment, nearly everything in the OS X Finder's Toolbar is available here through the menus at the top of the screen.  Instead of cluttering the window with lots of extra buttons, the designers of Nautilus placed them inside menus at the top of the window and assigned them keystrokes to make them accessible at least as quickly as clicking a toolbar button.  In my view, this is perhaps a more elegant approach than Apple's.

In addition to the icon view shown above, Nautilus also offers a list view, which resembles the following:

Arguably, this list view is easier to view than Apple's.  The alternating colors on each line make it easy to follow the information about a particular file or folder from right to left.  The display is very clean and neat.

As I mentioned earlier, Mac OS X users would probably note the lack of a toolbar here and assume that there isn't much more to the Nautilus file browser than meets the eye.  They would, however, be wrong.

For instance, where the Finder used the icons in a "sidebar" on the left of Finder windows to take the user to their home directory, desktop, etc., Nautilus uses the "Places" menu. 

Pressing "Alt-Home" takes the user immediately to their account's Home directory.  Similarly, the Places menu will take you to the "Computer" location, Templates, the Trash, or the CD/DVD Creator.  There aren't Documents, Applications, Movies, Music, and Pictures locations within Linux, so there aren't specific buttons in Nautilus to take you to those locations.  On the other hand, even in OS X those are all under the Home directory, so that's not a significant difference.

Just as OS X included a "Go to Server" function in its "Go" menu, Nautilus includes a "Connect to Server" function in its "File" menu:

When the user selects this "Connect to Server" function, a window similar to the following appears:

This window supports the same kinds of connections that Apple's "Go to Server" did, with the notable exception of Apple Filesharing Protocol connections.  Unlike Apple's interface, which requires the user to enter the address on one window, enter the authentication information on a second window, and then select the volume to be opened on a third window, Linux does all this from the one window.  And just as OS X allows the user to browse the network to find shared resources, so does Linux.

Going back to the File menu previously shown, note that there is a "Create Document" function listed.  if you setup certain "template" files on your system for common document types (e.g., text file, JPG file, spreadsheet), Nautilus will allow you to instantly create a document from that template by choosing this menu item or right-clicking inside a folder.  Unless I've missed it, that's something OS X doesn't do.

Now consider the Nautilus "Edit" menu:

Just as in OS X, a user can select files one at a time, shift-clicking to get several at once, or selecting all files in a given location.  But unlike OS X users, Nautilus users can also specify a "pattern" to match in the filenames in a given location.  For example, the user might request all files with "logo" in the name or "*.pl" to get all the perl scripts in a directory.  This can be handy for a number of reasons.

The "Create Archive" function allows the user to automatically create a ".tar.bz2" archive file containing the currently selected item in Nautilus.  If that item is a directory, Nautilus will archive the entire directory.  If it is a collection of files, those files will be archived.  The user is prompted to specify the location where the archive iwll be stored.

"Preferences" provides a way to customize the behavior and look of the Nautius views.

 The "Views" tab of Nautilus preferences allows the user to specify how new folders should be opened, how the files and folders in them should be sorted, whether hidden and backup files should be visible, and one other thing - the "Zoom Level".  If that sounds unfamiliar to the Mac users reading this, it should.  OS X doesn't have that.  In Nautilus, a user can "zoom in" or "zoom out" on a window.  By zooming in, the user sees more detail about the file in the display.  For example, consider these files, shown first at the "default" zoom level:

Now look at one of those files at the maximum zoom level and note the amount of detail visible in the file's icon at this point (it becomes a thumbnail preview of the document the closer we zoom into it):

Note also that Nautilus is now displaying the file's size and modification date/time below the name, providing even more information about it in icon view.

 This panel provides an opportunity to adjust the default behavior of the Nautilus file explorer.  The user may choose to single-click items to open them, ask before emptying the Trash, etc.

When zooming in on an icon in the Nautilus browser, the additional information provided is (in part) established by these settings).  The "List Columns" tab determines which columns of information are shown in List view:

Some of these columns are not easily accessible through OS X's Finder.

The "Preview" tab provides some additional customization options:

As the user zooms in on files, this determines how the previews will be offered and displayed.

I've left "Backgrounds and Emblems" last here because they're more or less eye candy, and something Apple will probably copy eventually and claim to have created first.  Backgrounds are the area shown behind the icons in icon view.  Nautilus allows backgrounds to be changed to specific patterns:

 Similarly, the background color can be changed:

Emblems are similar to Apple's "Labels" in OS X, but are a bit more flexible and in some cases more visible (and in others, less):

Notice how the "quanta" folder in the above browser window has a "Special" emblem on it.  The "AUTHORS" file has "Oh no!" and "Money" emblems on it.  In the same kind of way that labels can help identify files on OS X, emblems can do so on Linux.  As far as I know, there's nothing like this in OS X 10.4.

Although it doesn't work the way that Apple's "Burn Folder" and CD/DVD burning does (i.e., the methods are different but the results are the same), the CD.DVD Creator included in Red Hat FC4 does the job for files and folders selected in Nautilus.  Here's what it looks like when it's invoked:

 Nautilus also provides an extremely detailed set of information for a file or folder when requested, starting with these basic details:

Continuing to information about the file's Emblems:

The detailed permissions information:

File association properties:

And, finally, the user's notes about the file:

Those are the major and more interesting features and functions of the Nautilus file browser.

Comparing and Contrasting the Two

If you like lots of toolbars in your windows rather than menus, which is a personal preferences, Nautilus would be a disappointing file browser at first, until its underlying power became apparent. 

Nautilus doesn't have an equivalent to OS X's "spring loaded folders".

Nautilus doesn't offer "Burn Folders" but does incorporate CD/DVD burning capabilities.

Nautilus doesn't offer "Smart Folders" but that's mostly because Linux hasn't implemented something like that yet.  Certain applications have "Spotlight-like" features that behave like Smart Folders, but the operating system as a whole does not do this.

The other noteworthy features of the OS X Finder exist in some form within Nautilus.

Nautilus offers a few features OS X does not, such as Emblems, Backgrounds, detailed file properties, the ability to easily change the application associated with a particular file type, the ability to zoom in and out of file displays, icons that preview the underlying document, and the ability to create compressed archives by right-clicking on a file.

Conclusion

If an OS X user was making substantial use of Smart Folders, Spotlight searching, Burn Folders, and the Finder's toolbars, Red Hat's Gnome Nautilus file explorer would appear limited due to its lack of these specific features.  On the other hand, a user not as familiar with these features would find the Nautilus file explorer to be comparable to that in Mac OS X, aside from the graphical differences.  Nautilus also offers some eye candy that OS X does not, in the form of the file emblems, background patterns to Nautilus windows, and background colors for Nautilus windows.

The next installment of the series will cover system settings, system preferences, and basic customization. 

Related Blogs:

• Boot an Intel Mac into Windows XP, with Apple's Blessing?
• Mac OS X "Tiger" vs. Linux, Part 10 - System Preferences
• Mac OS X "Tiger" vs. Linux, Part 12 - Application Install/Mgmt.
• Mac OS X "Tiger" vs. Linux, Part 13 - Spotlight vs. Linux Search
• Mac OS X "Tiger" vs. Linux, Part 14 - Conclusion

Related Links:

• Grabbing Impossible Mac OS X Screenshots
• Linux System Startup
• What is Darwin (Mac OS X)?
• What's in the Linux /etc directory?