Counterpoint: Nautilus is both slower and less stable than Windows Explorer on large folders, even though the Linux filesystem is much faster. These super-indexed desktop linux search functions are also dog slow, while `grep` and `find` in the terminal are much faster (for searching inside files), and those certainly don't cache anything.
replyWindows Explorer crashes for me about ~3 times a day at work, and takes down the taskbar with it, so not sure about more stable. I don't use Nautilus though because it's pretty bare bones compared to Dolphin. Also:
reply> These super-indexed desktop linux search functions are also dog slow
Baloo-indexed KRunner on Plasma is instant. I index my entire home folder, including hidden files, and I can substring search with imperceptible latency. I can't speak to other search implementations, but yes KRunner + Baloo is much faster than grep.
I'm pretty sure you have a plugin installed for Explorer that makes it crash - while Explorer is far from a perfect piece of software, its not even close to this bad, but it's pretty easy to extend it with COM objects that then run inside the process, that can and do crash the whole thing.
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replyThunar is very fast compared to Nautilus.
reply> Nautilus is probably pre-indexing directory structure so it doesn't have to read disk every single time you open your home folder. That's good
replyNo it isn't good, and no it probably doesn't because it is kernel's job. I'd rather they don't do double caching, and it's actually worse if they do.
Syscalls are expensive. It's not double caching, it's layers of caching. The kernel caches inside kernel memory space, sure, but you still need a syscall to reach that. Every application has layers of caching, it's very normal. This isn't even the top layer of cache, because of course the CPU itself has multiple caches.
replyBut, for example, in a web application you will commonly cache requests. But then the database also has a cache. And then the filesystem the database is on also has a cache.