Worker

Worker is a Linux copy of the Amiga file manager, like the gentoo file manager, and has the classical two panels. Unlike the gentoo file manager, worker only requires X, no external GUI libraries. It is highly configurable as far as usability goes, but rather ugly looking. What especially makes this file manager special is that unlike most file managers, it has the ability to identify file types based on its header content, extension, or actual contents, so it will never confuse a movie with a picture just because of a bad extension.

Worker can have its button panel configured so that it can appear vertically, or horizontally, and appear at different places on the screen. Each button action is actually a series of actions, and does have basic scripting support, including the ability to ask a user for input. There also exists button banks, so you can group various buttons together in "separate" panels, and switch what bank your currently using. This makes it possible to include pretty much any commands you want as buttons, having a normal bank, a bank for programing commands, a bank for launching applications, games, banks for this, banks for that, etc.

The two panels Worker can display contains currently (as of 2006) three modes. Normal file listing mode, a information display mode that tells you about the selected file, and a image preview mode that tries to display the currently selected file. The image preview mode works by actually starting another program and telling it to use a already setup window. In this way, theoretically any program can be previewed, more realistically, only a handful of programs have command lines options that allow this to work. The default image previewer is xli, but imagemagick can also be used easily enough.

As well as being ugly, it draws its own widgets, and these can sometimes feel strange. It also makes various things hidden, as what button you press with can have different effects. Various options can also have bad or unhelpful descriptions or names, so be sure to read its online documentation and wiki for information about various options.