Extra tools
Beyond the basics, what special features are on offer?
Krusader has a built-in folder sync tool, file comparison features, a mounted volume manager and features for working with system files. Generally, all of the menus have a little bit extra when it comes to features, and these extras could represent quite a lot of saved work because they are already configured and ready to go, even if some require installation of extra tools to the system to make them work.
Krusader, Thunar, Dolphin and Nemo all have good browser facilities for navigating and mounting network resources, to the extent that we didn’t see a need to compare them with each other. The facilities of Midnight Commander in this area aren’t quite as smooth. Having said that, Midnight Commander has a unique advantage when it comes to network use as it works extremely well over SSH in a terminal. This means that you can run it on another machine such as a Raspberry Pi for remote file management. Generally speaking, Midnight Commander offers a fluid workflow when combined with command-line work.
Thunar has a handy file search facility that searches from the current directory. Nemo takes things a step further because it can search within files. Dolphin can search by filename or content, too, but it can also link directly to other more advanced search tools. This requires some configuration and installation work, though. Krusader lacks these facilities but the built-in file search tools are more advanced out of the box because you can search by many criteria. Outside of search, Dolphin is aware of many external tools in areas such as disk space management and partitioning.