The road to Linux hell is paved with bad file managers. It seems like there's a ton of them out there, all reeking of being uncompleted projects, as if someone ambitiously started coding a file manager, only to drop the effort when it became apparent how difficult it was to code a good one. Witness how xfm, kfm and gmc have an unfinished look, even though gmc is based on the long-established Midnight Commander.

That's why the open-source Corel File Manager is such a treat, even if it has come under some criticism in the Linux community for its fidelity to the Microsoft Windows look and feel. Indeed, if someone felt the KDE Control Center looked too much like Microsoft Windows, they'd positively lay an egg when looking at the Corel File Manager, purposely designed to look like the Windows File Manager, using a folder-based hierarchy.

Yet, if users are familiar with a folder-based hierarchy and the interface works, why should there be any debate about its merits? With Corel File Manager, Corel has given the Linux community an immensely useful tool.

The default view is to present files and folders along with their size, attributes and when last modified. To make any changes to these specific files and folders, change their properties (assuming you have the proper permissions). Corel File Manager lets you change permissions without needing to know the chmod command at all: a graphical interface with click boxes sets permissions, and two pull-down menus display what groups have permissions to the file.

Corel File Manager allows you to move past your own hard drive by sharing directories and mounting network shares under Windows Networking. This was not a feature that we tested, but is one that could be useful for integrating a Linux box into a Windows network. And like the Microsoft Windows File Manager, it will follow file links and locations to the Internet: after all, isn't the Internet really an extension of the files on your hard drive? While you won't want to use Corel File Manager as a Web browser, you could; it displayed most Web pages flawlessly in our brief testing.

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