Nautilus

Nautilus is the official file manager for the GNOME desktop. It is designed to be primarily a file manager, but also supports virtual/remote file systems (using gnome-vfs) and plugins (using bonobo) like HTML viewing (Mozilla or gtkhtml), CVS (Apotheke) and CD/DVD Burning.

It also manages the desktop icons for GNOME (which actually just is a directory, ~/Desktop).

Nautilus ships with GNOME; however, it can be installed on most Linux distributions that do not have GNOME installed on them.

Nautilus Tips
Some useful URIs you can try with nautilus are (some of these require extra plugins that aren't always installed by default):
 * start-here:// -- general start 'page'
 * computer:// -- lists local, remote filesystems and removable media
 * fonts:// -- see all installed fonts
 * preferences:// -- configure Gnome
 * themes:// -- see all installed themes
 * applications:// -- applications, same as the usual Gnome menu
 * network:// -- lists network shares, SMB/Windows network and NFS
 * smb:// -- lists SMB network
 * burn:// -- CD creator, put files in here, then press "write CD"
 * can also use the usual ftp://someserver and http://someserver URLs

By default, when accessing desktop icons, Nautilus opens a new window while browsing the filesystem and also has no location bar. This can be remedied (if you choose) by going 'Edit->Preferences->Behaviour->Always open in browser windows'.