Thursday, March 14, 2013
Batch Mode is Unknown to File Managers
When will Thunar, Dolphin, Window Explorer, et al, learn how to copy files in batch mode? Copying files in batch mode would require about an afternoon's worth of programming, at the most, but would avoid fragmentation and speed up the copy. Right now, I am waiting on Dolphin to finish copying six groups of files, which it is attempting to do all at once, which is the worst possible method. That means the overall copy takes more time to complete and disk fragmentation will be the inevitable result.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
I don't understand this. I thought Linux file managers copied files one after the other, resulting in no fragmentation. I know for certain that Midnight Commander, the one I use, copies files one by one. I've also used Nautilus and Thunar, and they seemed to do it too. As far as batch mode is concerned, if that means a copy/move queue, to enable copying/moving from/to several different locations in one command, Krusader allows that to be done, and Midnight commander will do in the future, if its website is to be believed.
Yes, Linux and Windows file managers copy files one after the other in an ideal use case scenario.
The usage case where a problem occurs, sometimes requiring a power off/on to regain control of the desktop, is when a user using the GUI begins a copy of a large number or large size of file(s), and then while that copy is proceeding, begins another copy, and then perhaps another and another. This may not be logical from the machine's point of view, but it is the way that humans work, because we forget something that we want copied and want to add it to the list, but don't want to have to wait there at the terminal until the first copy completes. Instead of waiting for the first copy to complete, the file manager, whether Explorer, Thunar or Dolphin, tries to handle all the copy commands at the same time, resulting in fragmentation and extremely slow performance, sometimes even a freeze of the desktop if enough copies have been initiated.
From what I can tell from its website, UltraCopier for Linux allows adding more jobs to a queue while it's in progress, and I suspect Krusader does too, though I don't use either. You could always test them out; they're both open source:
http://ultracopier.first-world.info/
http://www.krusader.org/
I'm afraid I'm pretty conservative when it comes to file managers. I just stick with whatever the desktop default is (thunar in xfce, dolphin in kde, explorer in windows). My workaround is user-education. I just learned to be patient and wait before adding files to a mass copy. Or I simply avoid the GUI altogether and code a script file to do all the copying. The script file solution works great! However, I am glad you posted a helpful suggestion here for others that may land from google.
Post a Comment