HOWTO: Install Double Commander in distrobox container and auto upgrade

Bluefin
2

All above is tested and it is running well in my “Blufin 42 Stable”. The only issue I have that Double Commander theme is just like from 90’s. This is maybe somehow related to some errors I have got when installing inside distrobox or there is some setting to tell container to use my Gnome theme. Any idea what to do to get better looking Double Commander? It looks like this:

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EDIT 1: About theming I have posted question to upstream Double Commander forum.

EDIT 2: I have got answer on upstream forum, it is required to also install “adwaita-gtk2-theme” package. I have updated instructions above. Now I get nice looking program:

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EDIT 3: Did some tweaking:

  • Remove that huge list of mounded disk: Configuration | Options | Layout | uncheck “Show drive buttons”.
  • Reduce some vertical spaces between files: Configuration | Options | Icons | Icon size | File panel | change from 32x32 to 16x16. Restart program is required.
  • Remove bold font: Configuration | Options | Fonts | Main Font change from default to Sans, Regular, 11.
  • I don’t like file extensions are separated in extra column. I like file name and extension to be as the same name: Configuration | Options | Files views | Columns | Custom columns | double click on field row Ext and column Delete and Ext is deleted. Then change in row “Name” data field “Field contents” from [DC().GETFILENAMENOEXT{}] to [DC().GETFILENAME{}]. Both setting now produces nice looking file name with extension. The downside is you can’t easily sort by extension (if you need sorting then don’t delete Ext field).
  • I don’t like Americal date format, I like ISO date format: Configuration | Options | File views | Formatting section | Date and time format change from mm/dd/yyyy hh:nn:ss to yyyy-mm-dd hh:nn:ss
  • Add directory list: Configuration | Options | Directory Hotlist | Add button | Add directory I will browse to | select directory “Documents” and Open button then Apply button and repeat for other directories you would like to have on hotlist when pressing Ctrl+D to quickly change directory. I selected “Documents”, “Music”, “Pictures”, “Videos” and “Downloads” and finally click on OK button to apply those settings.
  • Remove start-up splash screen: Configuration | Options | Miscellaneous | uncheck Show splash screen.
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EDIT 4: I have found excellent beginner tutorials on Youtube. Start with: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I51pueQy30k and is “Chapter 1”, then follow “Chapter 2” all the way to “Chapter 10”. Very interesting quick tips how to speed up woking with file manager.
Few interesting one:

  • You can use View | Thumbnails view to display e.g. content of images
  • Focus on left pane press Ctrl+<Right> and the same folder structure is displayed in right pane.
  • Alt+<Left> multiple times, just moves to the previous “history”, the folders that were previously selected.
  • <Left> key moves one level up in directory structure (also Backspace key), <Right> moves down to subfolder.
  • Ctrl+B flatens (view) all directories and you get all files from all subdirectories dispalyed. Excellent to search all files from all subdirectories with Ctrl+F. To get back to normal view press Ctrl+B again.
  • Ctrl+F uncheck { to enable that searches strings in anywhere if file.

Some other tips, but those was most memorable (to me at least). There are other tricks worth watching.

Someone else has some interesting trick to share?

EDIT 5: I forgot to mention why I started to play with Double Commander in the first place. It is feature rich file manager, open-source and available on Linux and Windows (that I am forced to use on regular job). There are other OS-es supported MacOS etc.

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