Supported protocols

Can these file managers connect with remote machines?

To help you connect with a variety of machines on your network running assorted operating systems as well as remote machines, these file managers also support different protocols. This means you don’t have to install additional graphical programs to access remote machines. Most of the file managers on our list support different network protocols. The functionality, however, isn’t provided by these tools themselves, and you have to install the underlying components yourself. For instance, you must have the requisite packages for Samba already installed if you wish to access Windows machines on your network. Also, SpaceFM and Thunar use udevil and gvfs to provide support for the various protocols so make sure these are installed on your machines, before testing these file managers.

Apart from using Samba to connect with remote machines, you can also use these file managers as FTP clients to access remote servers. If you’ve installed the necessary NFS components, you can also mount and then access directories on another Linux machine on the network from the comfort of your favourite file manager. For users who still prefer to use SSH and FISH protocols to securely transfer files to remote machines, the same can also be done using these file managers.

XFE is the only dud in this test. It doesn’t support any protocol and can only be used to browse the local disk and partitions.