Is there a file manager out there that doesn't leave any trace of my activity 👻 within the hard drive (like thumbnails, caché, temp files, leftover files, etc.)?

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1

Or if not, with automated deletion?

I feel like I’m not in control into what kind of leftover files remain in my computer weeks after deleting them, because of the file manager. I used Thunar and Dolphin.

2

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/List_of_applications/Utilities#File_managers

I think most graphical file managers need to cache some info in order keep a decent performance. Maybe some lightweight ones might not use such features…
Otherwise, probably CLI ones would be your best bet.

3

Midnight commander

It’s CLI. It’s also available in the community repository.

$ pamac search mc
[...]
mc                                                                                                                                                                                                   [Installed] 4.8.27-1                         community
A file manager that emulates Norton Commander

So it’s installable with: :point_down:

pamac install mc

Should do it.

4

On my i3 installation I use ranger as CLI filemanager

5

nnn for the win :slight_smile:
Its like the ‘micro’ of cli-file-managers … not too technically complicated, easy and comfortable.

6

Takes minimalistic to a whole new level!

7

I do use mc more than 20 years.
It has also a file/dir for cache, copy/paste. But it is very small, and neat in one place. ~/.cache/mc (the whole dir has 1034 Byte at the moment)
:ghost: :wink: :guardsman: :footprints:
Everywhere i go, i first install mc, htop and nowadays zsh.

8

Didn’t know this.

Awesome!

Well, I haven’t even known about Linux for that long, never mind mc…

:wink:

9

It’s not just the file manager you need to worry about. Unless the file itself gets overwritten, your pr0n can still be found. :smirk:

:rofl:

11

Is it too much to ask for a file manager that doesn’t copy the information of my files into other very specific directories? I kinda get angry at that. It shouldn’t do it at all.

I will try what was suggested above and see if I can uninstall the other 2 file managers I have.

12

What remains is dolphin creating for you exactly?
(thumbnails is configurable … so is index, which isnt controlled by dolphin, but by baloo)
Or same question for thunar?

As to your last comment - you probably want/need to keep the default file manager for your DE (kde=dolphin, xfce=thunar)

13

I use XFCE, what happens if i uninstall thunar?

14

Thunar is a core program of xfce. I really doubt that you can uninstall it completely. Just put it back and live with it. install nnn and make the suckless guys happy → :wink:

15

You can use

pamac info thunar

… to see which dependencies uninstall thunar will kill. I dont suggest it. :wink:

Main problem will be that ‘xfdesktop’ will be uninstalled too.

16

Better not then.

17

I’m trying to find the folder i saw the other day, I will respond to your questions if I find them again.

I know that even after using bleachbit they still appeared.

18

thank you so much for this! :slight_smile:

19

Ok, I tried this short in my VM. LightDm and xfce starts as supposed. But ‘Thunar’ is gone and there are no desktop symbols shown/available. The rest seems to work normal.

This is only a short view. :wink:

20

Do you still have trash bin?

21

This should still exist:

~/.local/share/Trash

Also gio should work;

gio list trash://
gio trash [FILE or DIR]
gio trash --empty