| Application |
Pro's |
Con's |
| thunar |
- good display of thumbs with tumbler (Ctrl-1)
- open videos with gnome-mplayer or other
- open images with an image viewer or feh slideshow
- custom action scripts can be made for right-click menu e.g. for resizing images
|
- involves using two app's to browse, not one
- thumbnails may not load for large files
|
| geeqie |
- this is a very souped up mirage or ristretto with file browser ability
- heaps of preferences
- Ctrl-E for Exif info
|
- no video support
- searching in a small file browser is complicated I think, especially as whole computer directory tree is there
|
| Xf image |
- customizable component colors (set in X File Explorer settings)
- easy navigation single click up and down levels
|
- can be slow generating thumbnails
- thumbnails are rather small due to the file name taking space
- file order 25 comes before 3 etc
- too basic
|
| gwenview |
- ease of navigation from directories to thumbs to images and back up again
- jump to full-screen for selected image or browsing all
- good view of thumbnails with thumbnail zooming
- can adjust background colour to dark
- fully configurable keyboard shortcuts
- kipi plugins add a lot of tools and export options
- It really does a good job for browsing
|
- drag-select of thumbs is only poss from the right hand edge
- videos don't open up full-screen
- playing of mp4 not possible? mpeg crashes
- don't need a toolbar! -remove all icons and it goes
- grey bar at bottom is almost unbearable while browsing/viewing
- whole system can be browsed -so not helpful for biginners who may get lost
|
| digikam |
- keeps your albums (directories) in collections -so you are not fumbling around in /media or somewhere in the system with no images
- powerful search and filter to find images, e.g. with tags, or geolocation
- can browse thumbnails of an album with all its child album images together -also can make a slide show of them all
- powerful editing tools (see my next page on image processing)
|
- needs some time to start up
- no video support?
- ugly gtk interface
|
| gthumb |
- plays video with easy selecting of next or any from thumbnail strip
|
- small thumbnail images and lots of grey
|
| Xnview MP |
- this is the best application for showing thumbnails as compacted tiles with customisable interface -colours and panels
- full iptc keywords management and filtering
- has good image handling tools
- keyboard shortcuts
- support for any file type
|
- some videos don't play
- excluding folders from database doesn't work
- no export to Picasaweb
|
| XBMP |
- Nice looks - large buttons interface for ease of control while viewing on a TV
- can make groups (albums) of different directories
- easily plays movies, images, music, whatever.
|
- Hard to get to the Settings following the row of buttons underneath main bar.
- Can't run on an Atom-powered netbook
- doesn't show a wall of thumbnails just file name list
- Quit button shows PC shutdown and hibernate!
|