Rox filer

Rox filer is the default antiX file manager.

Rox filer does not seem to be under active development

Rox's homepage: https://sourceforge.net/projects/rox/

It's very light weight, and also, by default, used to manage desktop icons (picture this: the icons you see on the rox-icewm desktop are a kind of transparent rox window, drawn above the desktop image).

It looks a bit spartan, and as some peculiar defaults:

- there is no "Bookmarks/Favorites" tab [that, as far as I know, it's impossible to change, but you can access bookmarks using an icon]
- the size of the window changes to accommodate the files that are inside the folder you are in
- a single left click launches files/apps

Using Rox filler:

Most of the more common changes to the way Rox displays files/folders can be made from the bar on the top of it’s main window:

The title bar of Rox's window shows the full path of the folder/directory you are in [the "home" folder shows up as "~"] followed, between brackets, by the mode that's being used to display that folder's content (ex: thumbnails).

The toolbar on the top of Rox's window allows you to access the most common tasks:

• Go up one level - click the first icon, that looks like an arrow pointing up
• Go to the home folder – Click the second icon, that looks like a little home.
• Add/access/manage favorites: click the third icon on Rox’s bar, that looks (for some reason) like a curved arrow pointing down. This also allows you to go to a recent folder (handy to copy/move files between folders).
• Refresh - click the fourth icon on Rox's toolbar to refresh the list of folder/icons.
• Change the order in which the files/folder are displayed: click the icon with three vertical dots on the left side and a down arrow on the right side (this changes between display in alphabetical order / chronological order, etc… and in normal or reverse order). You can select directly how to display files/folders by: right click empty space inside Rox’s window > view > and select how to display information (you have to check a field to use reverse order- for example- newer files first)
• Changing icon size: click the “plus” icon - a left click increases the icon's size, a right click decreases icon's size

• Toggle between Show/hide files details: click the seventh icon [that looks like "lines with a tiny plus sign"] on Rox's toolbar - when viewing columns with details, you can click the column you want to use to organize how files are displayed (ex: by name, by date, by size, etc), like on most file managers.

The right side of Rox's toolbar lists the number of files on the current folder (or number of selected files- in this case, it shows also their size).

Rox does not have a tabbed interface and it's a single pane application. If you want to copy/move files or folders from one place to another, probably the best way is opening two Rox windows, one for the source, other for the destination.

TIP: Accessing drives (thumb-drives, cd-roms, dvd-roms, etc)- mounted drives are available, as sub-folders under the folder /media [to get there, click the up arrow on Rox's toolbar until you reach the top, then select /media].

A circle on the upper left side of the drive's icon indicates that it's present. When that circle is green, that means that drive is mounted and accessible.

Folders inside /media that do not have circles on the upper left are probably mount points created previously while using those drives.

TIP: Open a terminal on the current folder: right click any empty space on Rox's window and select Window > Terminal here

TIP: Manually enter the full path of the folder you want to go to: Right click on any empty space inside Rox-filer's window > "Window" > "Enter path"

TIP: In order to use Rox-filer in the fastest way possible for the more common tasks, access this folder and add them to the favorites:

/media - so you can open any mounted drive instantly

/usr/share/applications - so you can search for, and launch any installed application

~/Downloads - to access your downloaded files quickly

Note: there's no need to add "home" to your Favorites menu, because it already has a dedicated icon on Rox-filer's toolbar. But you can add it anyway. It's handy if you use the keyboard to navigate your files/folders- Press Ctrl + B to show the Favorites menu and use the cursor keys to select where you want to go, then press enter.

If you right click any Favorite, its opened in a new Rox-filer (handy to copy/move files between a thumb-drive and your computer, for example)

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Changing Rox's default behavior:

You can, without much difficulty use more "common" settings, to make Rox behave in a more conventional way [from info available in antixforum.com sticky posts]:

-Launch Rox file manager > right click any empty space inside it’s window > click “Options” >

• If you don’t want the window to resize to fit only the current folder’s contents: In the first tab, check the first option (“Never automatically resize”)
• if you don’t want to launch files with a single click: uncheck ” Single-click navigation”
• If you want to see folders listed first, then files: check “Directories come first (for sort by name)”
• If you want to see previews of image files on their icons: Click the “thumbnails” tab, to the left and make sure the first option is checked ( “Show image thumbnails”).