PCManFM Regenerates Thumbnails every time I open a folder

Andrea

1/8/24, 3:33 PM

I am running Xubuntu 22.04.1 with PCManFM 1.3.2. Whenever I enter a folder with some images, one of my CPU cores spikes up to 100% for a few seconds as the thumbnails slowly roll in. This makes me assume that it is generating the thumbnails for the folder. But if I change folder and then go back to the previous one, the process starts again and the thumbnails are generated again from scratch.

I went into htop to check, and the maxed out core is indeed maxed out by the pcmanfm process.

This is especially a problem for me as I have a lot of folders with more than 100 images each, so whenever I change folders I am unable to see any thumbnails until I wait out the process.

I am not sure how to avoid this from happening, it seems like pcmanfm is not caching the thumbnails at all or it is just ignoring the cache. Does anyone have any idea how to avoid this behaviour and make pcmanfm access the cache?

117

0 + 7

xubuntu

thumbnails

pcmanfm

kanehekili

1/8/24, 8:12 PM

If you add a new starter in "Session Startup" settings with `/usr/bin/pcmanfm -d` - does that help? It starts pcmanfm as daemon.

guiverc

1/8/24, 9:36 PM

Don't forget `pcmanfm` is a *deprecated* program using *libraries* that don't get security fixes or updates anymore. All development moved to its replacement `pcmanfm-qt` many years ago (using Qt5 and not GTK2). GTK *development* is with GTK4, with GTK3 in *maintenance* mode, GTK2 was abandoned.

Andrea

1/9/24, 9:04 PM

@kanehekili this is how I set it to startup already

Andrea

1/9/24, 9:38 PM

@guiverc I didn't know that, I just thought that the pcmanfm-qt package was a port of the GTK one, not a different program entirely. I saw the lower version number (1.2.0 vs 1.3.2) so thought it was outdated. But anyways, after installing pcmanfm-qt the problem got solved entirely and thumbnails are lighting fast. I have other problems with this version that were solved in the GTK one (for one the lack of zooming with ctrl+scrollwheel), although they aren't as major as the thumbnail problem

guiverc

1/9/24, 9:42 PM

The program `pcmanfm-qt` started as a *fork* of `pcmanfm` (by the [same developer PCMan](https://github.com/PCMan)) but it was then improved in many ways by that author & he declared it a different program to what he originally forked (why the version was reset!). The original fork was now done almost a decade ago don't forget.

Andrea

1/10/24, 11:17 PM

@guiverc I have been using pcmanfm and reading about it online for a few years now, this is literally the first time I have heard about the qt version being the main development line of the program. Even the official Wikipedia page and Archwiki page mention the gtk version as the main one and the qt version as an alternative version. This is odd and misleading... Shouldn't that be corrected in some way?

guiverc

1/10/24, 11:39 PM

PCMan doesn't exactly keep his *thoughts to himself*, blogging rather extensively about it (from 2008 onwards; it's not a young project), but also don't forget `pcmanfm` handles some of the LXDE desktop, just as `pcmanfm-qt` handles some of the LXQt desktop; thus they'll both have baggage when **only** used as a file-manager on a non-native desktop (GTK2 for LXDE & Qt5 for LXQt); ie. neither would be efficient with *modern* Xfce (which was different to the days back when Xfce was GTK2 too). If either achieves what you want, and you have the resources to spare use whichever you like.

Elon Musk

I sit in a Tesla and translated this thread with Ai:

EN: PCManFM Regenerates Thumbnails every time I open a folder

Post an answer

Most people don’t grasp that asking a lot of questions unlocks learning and improves interpersonal bonding. In Alison’s studies, for example, though people could accurately recall how many questions had been asked in their conversations, they didn’t intuit the link between questions and liking. Across four studies, in which participants were engaged in conversations themselves or read transcripts of others’ conversations, people tended not to realize that question asking would influence—or had influenced—the level of amity between the conversationalists.