How to set PcManFm as the default file manager?

Solution 1:

After struggling with this Nautilus' slowness for a while, I decided to change my default as well. All of the "proper" solutions I tried doing didn't work very well. For instance, choosing the default in exo-preferred-applications didn't update the dash (or much else for that matter), changing .desktop files only worked sometimes (Dropbox still used nautilus), etc.

The simple solution that works for me in all cases without mucking with changing desktop files was to do the following two commands:

sudo mv /usr/bin/nautilus /usr/bin/nautilus.bak
sudo ln -s /usr/bin/pcmanfm /usr/bin/nautilus

You can of course replace /usr/bin/pcmanfm with /usr/bin/thunar, or whatever.

Edit: If you also want to have a desktop, open /etc/xdg/autostart/nautilus-autostart.desktop and make the Exec line

Exec=nautilus --desktop

Solution 2:

I think the bottom method from the community entry on Default File Manager is very easy, and I just tested it for SpaceFM (feature-richer PcManFM fork).

In terminal, execute

 exo-preferred-applications

Then move to the Utilities tab, and under File Manager, choose your weapon of choice.