Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) will have to use an older version of Nautilus, the file manager, the developers have decided.
Much of the GNOME 3.18 stack has been implemented already in Ubuntu 16.04, but it looks like the file manager won’t be one of those packages. A decision was made to skip the upgrade for Nautilus in this cycle, mainly because there are too many issues that need to be solved.
Ubuntu developers don’t just integrate the vanilla version of Nautilus in the operating system, they usually make some significant changes to the application. The 3.18 version of the file browser wasn’t received all that well and it looks like there are still some issues with it, but the most important aspect is the menubar, which is no longer being used.
An older and more stable file manager
As Ubuntu users know, a menubar is used for applications in Unity, but the new version of Nautilus no longer uses anything like it. This mean that the Ubuntu devs need to add it and it’s not all that easy.
Canonical’s Sebastien Bacher explained these problems on Launchpad and the reasons why they chose to revert to the older version.
“The new nautilus is nice but needs some more work before being ready to replace the old one. Some features have been removed that users seem to care about, upstream identified some usability issues with the new file copy dialog, the icon view canvas need more work to accomodate other zoom levels. It’s not easy to add back a menubar and we would prefer to have one under Unity for the LTS,” Sebastien Bacher wrote on Launchpad.
If some of you looked at Ubuntu 16.04 LTS right now, you might have noticed that the file manager looked weird. We assumed that it will get fixed in time for the launch, but it’s too much work that has to be done by Ubuntu, so it’s not really worth it. The change will be implemented in the coming days.
Via Softpedia