The file picker on Ubuntu 23.04 is still not as good as the file picker on Windows and Macintosh computers. It needs 6 months more work before it is even usable. The thumbnails do not show unless you open the folder in the file explorer and then open the file picker to pick a file to upload. This is nowhere near as good as this should be in 2023, but the developers are not as good as the developers in Microsoft and Apple anyway, open-source developers are not as good, they are not paid so they do not need to put in any effort. But I wish that they would, this is a promising feature. I do love the new screenshot feature in Ubuntu with the ability to select an area and then capture it. But the file picker bug has been a thing since 2004 and it is still in the works nineteen years later. Why? Is it this hard to even fix anything? The devs do not even care, they just want you to name your files instead and then you may find them easier. Annoying though.
- 15 years of not having basic file management features in the file picker doesn’t demonstrate how having them doesn’t work, this also isn’t about “must”, like there’s no other way, a user can notice something then go to their FM to change it, but what’s the problem with just letting them change it right there and then? it’s not like anyone will confuse the file picker as the only way to do it.
- sorry to say, but the file picker is already its own application-within-an-application, just because it has fewer features doesn’t mean it’s not an application separate from the parent application.
- how this relates to providing basic file management features I don’t know. there don’t need to be API changes when adding things like rename/move/copy/etc to a file picker.
- such basic features don’t require shared settings, and it’s not like file pickers don’t already have shared settings, do you not already remember default views, visible columns, their sizes, bookmarks, etc?
- personally, I think the file picker should just literally call the FM in a special file-picking mode, no need to make a copy of half the FM to make a separate file picker. similar to how FMs already have a desktop mode to take care of how files look and act on the desktop.
- pretty sure we’ve had grid view patches for ages, though I do agree someone actually needs to implement it, but it would help if gnome was more open to the idea, nobody wants to write a big patch for something gnome has no interest in actually accepting.
Windows Vista in 2006 had proper thumbnails in the file picker, so why does Linux not have this in this day and age?
This is the original bug submission from 2004: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=141154