PCManFM

PCMan File Manager (PCManFM) is a powerful file manager application written by Hong Jen Yee. It is the default file manager of LXDE.

Installation
PCManFM can be easily installed via emerge:

Openbox integration
To have PCManFM start (on a per-user basis) when using Openbox as a window manager add it to the user's file.

Adding desktop icons
Generally speaking, desktop icons for installed applications can be found in the folder. In order to add an application link to the Desktop simply copy the appropriate shortcut from the directory to the user's desktop directory. Follow the syntax in the example below by substituting application.desktop for the application of choice:

If the copied link for the application does not show up on the desktop try refreshing the session by logging out and logging back in.

File templates
Like GNOME's Nautilus and KDE's Dolphin file managers, PCManFS (version 1.2.0 and up) makes use of context menu file templates for quick file creation. PCManFS supports both the KDE style and GNOME style of template creation. Users can decide which method to use. For Gnome users or new users in general the quickest and most straight forward option would be to skip to GNOME style. For transitioning KDE users the following KDE style section should be helpful.

KDE style
To create new file templates using the KDE style files must be defined in the proper locations. Global templates should be placed in while local (per-user) templates should be placed in  If these folders do not exist they will need to be created.

For global templates:

For local templates:

The contents of the files should follow this scheme:

If the above folder(s) did not exist before PCManFM was running, then the folder(s) will be ignored until PCManFM is restarted. Either log out and log back in or use kill to end the PCManFM process.

After a refresh the newly created template files can be accessed via the context menu's (right-click) entry.

GNOME style
To use the GNOME style of templates make a folder titled in the user's home directory:

Fill the folder with desired template files. In order to work as most users expect, the template files must contain the data they are supposed to represent. For example, to have bash.sh, text.txt, and a document.odt as file templates create one of each type of file in the directory. This process involves saving a file of each type with the associated program. A template of an empty text file should be created with a text editor, the bash script file should contain a line starting with, and an empty open document text file should be created and then saved with an open document text editor (LibreOffice or OpenOffice).

If the folder did not exist before PCManFM was running, then the folder will be ignored until PCManFM is restarted. Either log out and log back in or use kill to end the PCManFM process.

After a refresh the newly created template files can be accessed via the context menu's (right-click) entry.

External resources

 * PCManFM on the LXDE wiki


 * PCManFM on Freecode