 I'm a big linux fanboy. I think you know this about me. I've created a channel with linux in the name I Love linux and I love most things about linux. I love the choice. I love the fact that it doesn't bug me for updates I love that. I don't have to restart it after I install a program I love many things about linux and I hate many things about Windows and macOS Irrationally so most of the time. I mean if we were completely honest with ourselves We can at least say that if we had to we could use Windows and get work done I would hate every minute of it, but I can be rational about this and say that I could do that But I would still prefer linux 10 times out of 10 and I think the vast majority of my audience agrees with me on that point That all being said there are things about linux that just piss me the fuck off and I'm dropping an F bomb there because it's Necessary so it's late at night It's just about midnight and I've decided to do one of these ranty videos Just because I wanted to do it and this video won't go up for a couple days So maybe I won't even choose to release it, but I don't know The thing I want to rant about today is call is file pickers Now I know what you're thinking Matt How much time do you actually dedicate to your to your thought process to file pickers and the sad fact of it is way too much File pickers are the reason why I can't get my entire family to actually use Linux because the file pickers on Linux are terrible and I'm using the plural bit because there are like nine different file pickers on Linux I mean it's not really nine it might be nine I don't know, but there's definitely three or four of them and they're all atrocious. They're multiple levels of bad Now I'm not talking about file managers like no Atlas or Nemo. Those are fine Varying degrees of fine. I should say but they have a purpose and they are Useful and if you don't like them, there are 12 other ones that you can choose from No, what I'm talking about is file pickers and these things are the things that pop up when you upload or download a file From a program. So if you open up Kaden live and want to open up a project You do that through a file picker if you want to download or upload a file to Firefox It through you know to a website and Firefox you do so through a file picker and they all use different ones and They don't do a very good job of what they're supposed to do. They are functional to the very minimal definition of functional if you know what I mean, so I'm gonna rant about this for Probably three or four hours. No, this video is not gonna be that long But it could could be I could go on for a long time about how horrible file pickers are so Let me go ahead and show you what I mean And I'm talking Softly so I don't wake up half the neighborhood. Oh as it be screaming man. All right Also, I've done this video once before and OBS decided to stop recording So that also pissed me off just a little bit extra more. So I've turned on the Setting info in OBS to ask me if I'm sure I want to stop recording because hopefully they'll prevent me from Randomly stopping the damn recording because that just pisses me off. All right. Anyways Many rant over let's move on to the main rant. Shall we? So here we are in lovely Firefox and Firefox is great. Okay The problems I have with Mozilla aside Firefox remains the Browser of choice for me. I couldn't stand brave. It has some things that just really bother me I couldn't stand Vivaldi, whatever the Point of the fact is Firefox is great But it uses a file picker just like all programs do and this is what it looks like and You probably see this thing probably 10 times a day if you use Linux Everybody does, you know, it's this is probably the most popular of the file pickers. I believe it's based on Thunar or something. I'm not actually sure it's some kind of GTK app. Nobody knows what it is. It's not good. It does have The feature that I think is most necessary when an open dialogue file picker comes up and that search and That search if you noticed that the video just skipped it's because Firefox or excuse me OBS stopped recording again, even though I have it set to ask me if I'm sure and you want to know why because the key binding for for find in Firefox control F is also for whatever reason the stop and Start record but key binding for OBS. That's the reason why OBS keeps, you know fucking fucking me over So I'm hoping that I actually managed to you know restart the Video and actually been able to edit it. I'm sure I have but anyways a few moments later I've changed that hotkey now. It took me a minute but Now that my OBS problems seem to have been changed or fixed hopefully Let me go back to my main rant which is file picker So if I hit control F over here and that shouldn't you know that shouldn't stop OBS now which it doesn't thank goodness and The search box comes up now. It's somewhere in this directory within another directory I have a image of tux and it has tux in the name of the file. So if I search for tux I Get nothing. Okay. I get absolutely nothing now I can go to a terminal here and I can do locate tux and I actually get Every place where tux is actually, you know, located now. It's not the best search ever Because it's in paths, you know, it's not usable. It's not something that I can drag and drop into Firefox It's of no use for me. Now if I were to use something like Ranger and do search in Ranger I could theoretically go through and enable drag and drop in order to do that from Ranger that'd be fine but if you if I just use the stock standard file picker in Firefox how am I supposed to find the picture unless I know exactly where it's at and Luckily, I'm very organized when it comes to my pictures I pretty much know where everything is and I've only become that way because I know that if I don't know Precisely where everything is on my system and I mean everything. I'll never find it again because Or at least I won't be able to find it in a file picker because the search and file pickers is atrocious Or in the case of something like Kaden live, so let me go show you Kaden live Let's just say I wanted to open up a thing here and we just go to Linux videos or whatever it doesn't matter This is the Kaden live file picker and now they look different because one is a GTK app One is a cute cute app and you would expect them to look different But there is no search in this app as far as I can tell it all now You can't just this is a drop-down. So that's not a search the file name here That doesn't act as a search and if I hit like control f or something That doesn't work. So as far as I can tell there is no search within this at all I thought maybe like if I You know somehow managed to you know get out of the Deactivate the text thing here and like hit the slash key in order to like of them search key binding Maybe that would work that doesn't work. There's no search in it in this at all So if you again, if you don't know the path the exact path and the exact location of the file you're looking for You're screwed you have to go to a terminal or a different file manager in order to actually find the damn thing and That's just done. Now. That's just two of them. Let me show you something else Let me quit this out of here and move this over here. So this right here is Telegram Everybody uses telegram probably or something like telegram and let's just say I wanted to download I did doesn't I think I can actually just download this I can just do this and hit save image s and Oh, actually, this is gonna be different. They've changed it since the last time I was here This is actually the same file picker as Firefox has so that's different than what we used to be for what I'm trying to think of what the other application I was using Was it OBS or not OBS was it Was it discord? It could be it might be discord. Let me upload a file. Nope. It wasn't discord Anyways, I guess it doesn't really matter. There are other file pickers out there There's one that looks really really old that looks like it was from like a Windows 98 style thing And it's not Qt based. It's I don't think at least not a recent version of Qt And there are a couple other ones out there as well They're all terrible that especially when it comes to search. They're all terrible either they're like the cute one and don't have search at all or they're like the GTK one and The search doesn't work. It just it doesn't work. You have to be in the direct if I went back to the Firefox thing and Was in the exact directory that I was but I know the knew the file to be in I could search for tux And it would show up So I don't know what it's using to actually search, but it's not using any of the There's no System-level service that is actually searching and providing that information to that file picker So it doesn't use locate it. Maybe it uses fine or something. We all know find is terrible I mean fine has its uses, but it's not as good as locate For actually searching the whole system. I mean so whatever it uses It's not it doesn't have any kind of index that goes outside of the Directory that it's actually in it just searches that directory and it doesn't search within sub directories It just it's what's not, you know recursive or anything It just searches in that directory for specific files if it's not in that directory you don't find it it's the dumbest thing in the world and We have all these file pickers right because Linux Developers can't agree on shit. We we like choice so much We create everything from scratch because we disagree with each other over what how things should look or how things should act and what we end up with in a lot of cases is a Smoldering pile of dog crap in terms of like file pickers. I mean you can just see this I mean this is bad right this is not a good user experience when you want to When you when you have an open dialogue file picker One of the things that you have to be able to do is search and it has to work well It works well on Windows. It works well on Mac OS. It does not work well on Linux and It's not gonna ever This is one of those things that is just going to annoy the crap out of me forever and ever because it's never ever going to be fixed And that makes me sad because like I said at the beginning I love Linux But this is one of those things in Linux that just drives me absolutely bonkers And it's also possible that maybe I just don't know what I'm doing. It's possible I'm an eternal Linux noob and there's a possibility that the cute version has searched And I just don't know what it is. It's possible that there's a key binding that allows you to access search in a cute based Open dialogue file, but file picker or whatever and I just don't know the secret handshake. It's possible It's also possible that there's a command you have to run or something that in order to Enable the gtk one to actually be able to search through things. It's possible I don't think that's true, but it's possible so you can let me know in the comments below if I'm an idiot You usually do and it's okay. I'll freely agree with you. But anyways It's late at night I've had problems with obs enough for the day. I'm done for now So if you want to follow me, you can do so add the Linux cast On twitter and facebook. You saw the facebook page there a minute ago I don't post there very often so whatever you can also support me on patreon at patreon.com Slash linux cast before I go I'd like to take a moment to thank my current patrons devon marcus magland Donnie spin east coast web chris mitchell mr. Fox american camp. Thanks everybody for watching and putting up with this rant I'll see you next time