Red Hat Linux 8.0: The Official Red Hat Linux Getting Started Guide
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# Using Nautilus

The graphical desktop includes a file manager called Nautilus that gives you a graphical display of your system and personal files. Nautilus is designed to be much more than a visual listing of files, however. It allows you to configure your desktop, configure your Red Hat Linux system, play your digital music and video files, browse your photo collection, access your network resources, and more all from one integrated interface. In essence, Nautilus becomes a shell for your entire desktop experience.

Working in Nautilus is efficient and provides an alternative to searching through the various sub-menus connected to the Main Menu or using a shell prompt to navigate the file system. The following sections explain how to use the Nautilus to enhance your desktop experience.

To start Nautilus as a file manager, double-click on your home directory icon:

Once Nautilus appears, you can navigate through your home directory or the rest of the file system. To return to your home directory, click the Home button.

When you navigate through your file system, you can always see where you are by looking at the frame on the left which shows you the current directory.

The main frame contains folders and files which you can drag with your mouse to move and copy them into new locations. If you prefer, you may click on the Tree tab on the bottom left to display a hierarchical view of your complete file system which may make moving and copying easier for you. If the Tree tab does not appear on the bottom left, you can make the tab available by right clicking in the tab area and choosing Tree from the menu.

If you do not want to use the tree view, you can open another Nautilus window by selecting File => New Window. Once you have another Nautilus window, you can drag and drop files to different directories. By default, dragging a file from one directory to another will move the file. If you wish to copy the file to another directory, press the [Ctrl] key while dragging and dropping the file.

By default, text-based files and images in your home directory will be seen as thumbnails. For text files, this means you will see a portion of the actual text in the icon. For images, you will see a scaled-down (or thumbnail) version of the image. To turn off this feature, select Edit => Preferences. Select Performance from the menu on the left. Select Never for the visual enhancements that you want to disable. Disabling these features will increase the speed of Nautilus.

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