Nautilus
Ranked 8 of 15 file managers by recommenders
Criticized more than recommended, mainly for missing features, slowness on large folders, and hard setup; those who recommend it see it as a light, smooth, consistent GNOME file manager with right-click scripts and solid remote access.
13 people recommended Nautilus in Hacker News comments, 3 had mixed feelings and 20 criticized it, November 2025 to October 2026.
Summary written by Claude from the comments below.
36 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 13
- mixed feelings
- 3
- warn against or regret it
- 20
The record
Recommended in 8 of 12 months
In 13 different threads.
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 13 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 0.6 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 8 of 12 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
- Recommended in 13 threadsNeeds 5 or more, met.
- The biggest thread supplies 8% of its recommendersNeeds half or less, met.
The same rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. Mixed feelings count toward neither side. How the badge works
What people say about it
Reasons grouped from a sample of 36 of the 37 opinions about it, picked in proportion to how many people recommend it, have mixed feelings and criticize it. Each mark is one comment in the sample. Open a reason to read what they said.
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Missing features compared with rivals
“when Nautilus can,t replicate some functionality which Windows has since forever”
Comment from 18 Jun 2026 in “Microsoft new Outlook takes 10 seconds to do what Outlook Classic does instantly” “I don't use Nautilus though because it's pretty bare bones compared to Dolphin.”
Comment from 9 Aug 2026 in “Windows 11's built-in Weather app wastes more than 1 GB of RAM” “miller columns in Finder are just awesome and I don't have them with Nautilus.”
Comment from 23 Nov 2025 in “Gnome is better macOS than macOS” - Comment from 25 Nov 2025 in “Google's new 'Aluminium OS' project brings Android to PC”
Slow, laggy or leaky on big folders
“Nautilus is both slower and less stable than Windows Explorer on large folders”
Comment from 9 Aug 2026 in “Windows 11's built-in Weather app wastes more than 1 GB of RAM” “Nautilus sometimes leaks memory and get killed by the kernel.”
Comment from 5 Oct 2026 in “Turn off Apple Intelligence on macOS 27 and get its disk space back” “Nautilus also lags when opening some directories.”
Comment from 28 Jan 2026 in “Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux” Hard setup and hidden information
“I have huge distaste for it(it's pretty, but omg what a pain to set up to be an actual DE…”
Comment from 10 Feb 2026 in “The Switch to Linux and the Beginning of My Self-Hosting Journey” “It frustrates me to no end that GNOME, Nautilus, etc. will truncate or hide information in many places.”
Comment from 8 Feb 2026 in “Microsoft Account bugs locked me out of Notepad – are Thin Clients ruining PCs?”
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Smooth and light on resources
“Nautilus, for me at least, resizes at 60fps, even when in a folder of thumbnails.”
Comment from 6 Apr 2026 in “Microsoft Hasn't Had a Coherent GUI Strategy Since Petzold” “takes less RAM and far less CPU usage than Microsoft's Explorer”
Comment from 5 Apr 2026 in “Ubuntu now requires more RAM than Windows 11” Consistent, usable, well-themed interface
“something as nice and consistent and usable as Nautilus”
Comment from 5 Jan 2026 in “It's hard to justify Tahoe icons” “It's perfectly themed just like the GTK3 apps.”
Comment from 4 May 2026 in “Why TUIs Are Back” Solid file handling and remote access
“nautilus and dolphin are both good ftp/scp/sftp clients”
Comment from 27 Jan 2026 in “Installing and Updating Filezilla from a Zip File on Pop_OS / Ubuntu” “Dolphin and Nautilus work without a hitch”
Comment from 22 Nov 2025 in “Microsoft Will Preload Windows 11 File Explorer to Fix Bad Performance” Keyboard filtering and right-click scripts
“Works for me. I'm typing D, it instantly filters the list of files and selects first item.”
Comment from 25 Nov 2025 in “Google's new 'Aluminium OS' project brings Android to PC” “Gnome's file manager nautilus supports scripts available on right click”
Comment from 29 Nov 2025 in “WinApps: Run Windows apps as if they were a part of the native Linux OS”
Other file managers people recommend
The four most recommended other file managers, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Mixed | Criticize | Approval | Months | Had for | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dolphin file manager | 66 | 8 | 16 | 80% | 12 | — | Approved |
| Finder (macOS) | 43 | 18 | 165 | 21% | 8 | 15 yrs21 people | — |
| Midnight Commander | 29 | 5 | 5 | 85% | 11 | — | Approved |
| Windows Explorer | 29 | 4 | 138 | 17% | 10 | — | — |
| NautilusThis page | 13 | 3 | 20 | 39% | 8 | — | — |
Also compared with File Pilot, Total Commander, Yazi and Directory Opus.
What people said
36 of the 37 opinions about it, picked in proportion to the three counts, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“I found The Nautilus series to be a rather decent treatment of Verne's book”
“after reading the synopsis [1], that appears to be fortunate”
“Nautilus sometimes leaks memory and get killed by the kernel.”
“Nautilus is basically Finder”
“They are translated on your average Linux distribution though”
“I love Nautilus, but the one I run (42.6) still has that ocasionally.”
“it drives me nuts when I can't do this on Linux (Nautilus”
“I don't use Nautilus though because it's pretty bare bones compared to Dolphin.”
“Nautilus is both slower and less stable than Windows Explorer on large folders”
“far too many minor gramatical mistakes in the articles from "nautilus”
“when Nautilus can,t replicate some functionality which Windows has since forever”
“who hates Dolphin/Nautilus/etc”
“The `nautilus' file browser on linux got me hooked on tabs”
“here are some of my favorite publication that sometimes cover these topics”
“It's perfectly themed just like the GTK3 apps.”
“have something like Nautilus”
“Nautilus, for me at least, resizes at 60fps, even when in a folder of thumbnails.”
“takes less RAM and far less CPU usage than Microsoft's Explorer”
“The leader https://nautil.us on your board is incredibly fast!”
“This was reported to Nautilus, and closed as not in their threat model.”
“I have huge distaste for it(it's pretty, but omg what a pain to set up to be an actual DE…”
“It frustrates me to no end that GNOME, Nautilus, etc. will truncate or hide information in many places.”
“Nautilus also lags when opening some directories.”
“nautilus and dolphin are both good ftp/scp/sftp clients”
“Nautilus opens a new window for every folder you enter.”
“something as nice and consistent and usable as Nautilus”
“in my personal opinion Nautilus’s breadcrumb picker does edge it against Finder”
“I was hit by article restriction warnings and the whole thing was half adverts.”
“neither nautilus nor nemo provides you convenient way to navigate”
“every single one has seemed clunky as heck compared to the contemporaneous windows”
“Gnome's file manager nautilus supports scripts available on right click”
“Works for me. I'm typing D, it instantly filters the list of files and selects first item.”
“But the only one that really breaks me is lack of typeahead in Nautilus.”
“miller columns in Finder are just awesome and I don't have them with Nautilus.”
“Dolphin and Nautilus work without a hitch”
“According to Chat GPT, Nautilus still hasn’t paid its writers after the 2018 dispute.”
Counts come from 1,791,911 Hacker News comments labeled by Claude, November 2025 to October 2026, with data through October 31, 2026. Counts updated 2 Nov 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.