Today I installed Thunar, XFCE’s file manager. I love Nautilus, but it has longer start times, and the folder loading is noticeably slower since I concentrated my files in a few folders. As an example, my ~/Library/Papers folder has something like 75 PDF files; but at least I don’t have to browse a topics tree to find it. I always find non-GNOME applications a little odd, but Thunar is very similar to Nautilus’ file browser mode. Using the same GTK+ theme helps a lot, as well as sharing Gio and Project Ridley.

Unfortunately, pattern search is less than optimal in both file managers. Thunar and Nautilus let you search for patterns, like *.pdf or *Validation*, but the search is case sensitive and doesn’t allow regular expressions. Does anyone know any regex search plugin for Nautilus or Thunar? (I just want to select files from the currently open folder; not a full search like Tracker or Beagle.)