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Using pcmanfm 0.5? Why to upgrade to pcmanfm 0.5.1

pcmanfm 0.5.1 is both a bugfix and a feature release. The purpose of this blog post is to pick out the gems why you really want to upgrade. If you have just a few seconds a minimal summary would be, that you should upgrade for:

  • fixes to critical bugs
  • better keyboard support
  • GUI customization

In more detail this is what is worth mentioning to me the most:

  • Fixed: copy-paste-rename-escape-truncate bug (#2710035)
  • Fixed: Running "pcmanfm foo" now opens directory $PWD/foo (was $HOME/foo before) (#2715642)
  • Added: GUI options to ..
    • display file sizes in kilobyte or kibibyte (#2250721)
    • show/hide location bar
    • show/hide side pane buttons
    • show/hide tab bar even when there's just a single tab
    • show/hide tab close buttons
  • Added: Keyboard support extended:
    • Tree navigation through and (#2040282)
    • now works like (unassigned before)
    • toggles pane to location pane
    • toggles pane to directory pane
    • and cycle through tabs (#1570102)
    • and cycle through tabs (#2328418)
    • shows jump-to-folder dialog when location bar is hidden

To me this means I can use copy-paste with less worries than in 0.5 and strip down the GUI what I really want to see. In 0.5 you get this view, no matter what:

Below is what I use now, most importantly without these side pane buttons that I came to really hate to have to look at.

Thanks to Eugene Arshinov for making that pain optional (and for most of the other GUI improvements). If you're running Gentoo: The sping overlay has a bumped ebuild already.