THE BEST NEW OPEN SOURCE SOFT WARE ON THE PL ANET

HiFile Textadept Kooha Warehouse Brave Feh Dosage Bugdom 2 OpenArena (Quake3e) Linux Assistant GridPlayer

Mayank Sharma has spent so much time dreaming about a Pi 5 that he won’t waste more waiting for his to arrive and will find new apps instead.

FILE MANAGER

HiFile

Version: 0.9.9.5

Web: www.hifile.app

A file manager is an integral part of a desktop environment. And while most do an adequate job of handling files and folders, for a majority of users, they aren’t everyone’s cup of tea. HiFile is one of the growing list of third-party file managers that make up for the shortcomings of the default ones.

The app is available as an AppImage. Grab it from its website, and make it an executable via your existing file manager, or with chmod +x .

One of the highlights of HiFile is that it’s lightning fast and lightweight. On first launch, you’re asked to select some basic settings, such as language and colour theme, which you can change later.

It uses a dual-pane layout, which is a traditional layout in many file managers. If you haven’t used one before, you’ll soon realise its convenience, especially when it comes copying and moving files and folders. You can use HiFile for all common file manager tasks, such as renaming, deleting, creating archives or extracting items from them, viewing text files, binary files or images, and much more. Interestingly, HiFile treats archives as normal folders; you can open them and perform any operations as with normal folders.

You can also use it to find, filter and sort files or folders. If you have folders that you tend to visit often, you can bookmark them with Ctrl+B or the star icon. This then makes it easier to access them.

HiFile is highly customisable, too. You can also zoom in and out of the interface just as you do in a web browser. Hold down the Ctrl key and then either scroll with the mousepad or touchpad, or with the + and - keys.

Talking of keyboard controls, one of HiFile’s specialities is the use of the spacebar to jump from one location to another. Also, when you start typing the name of a folder, HiFile quickly points you to the correct folder.

HiFile has tons of useful features that make it a very efficient file manager, especially for keyboard warriors.

LET’S EXPLORE HIFILE...

1 Dual-pane

A two-pane view offers several advantages over a single-pane view, especially if you tend to find yourself juggling between multiple folders.

2 Toolbar

The toolbar lists all the commonly used functions, along with a tooltip to help new users get acquainted.

3 Item selection

HiFile shows selections in a different colour. Selections are also persistent, and aren’t cancelled until you press Escape or leave the current folder.

4 Bookmarked folders

These are the bookmarked folders, which are also displayed at the top of all path searches for easier access.

Textadept has a GTK version as well as a terminal version, which is ideal for editing on remote machines.

TEXT EDITOR

Textadept

Version: 12.1

Web: https://orbitalquark.github.io/textadept/

Most distros ship with a default text editor, which is usually quite vanilla. Textadept’s philosophy is very similar to the venerable Vim in that it’s an easy-to-use, yet highly extensible text editor, albeit with a GUI.