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Patched Nautilus 3.4 dual pane Ubuntu 13.04

Ubuntu 13.04 uses Nautilus 3.6 by default, for which some features that were available in Nautilus 3.4 are no longer available, such as the dual pane view, sidebar tree view and more.

If you want these features back in Ubuntu 13.04, a proper appmenu for Nautilus along with other features / options such as:
  • customizable toolbar with back / forward buttons on the left: you can add or remove the up, refresh, home, computer and search icons and you can also add the old location / path bar toggle button which was removed from Nautilus starting with version 2.30;
  • unified toolbar that spreads across the whole window width unlike in the original Nautilus 3.4 (also, only one toolbar is used when using the extra pane (F3) feature);
  • other minor features like displaying the icons in the pathbar for Documents, Downloads, etc.

... you can install the patched SolusOS Nautilus 3.4 which I've uploaded today in the WebUpd8 Experiments PPA for Ubuntu 13.04 (Raring Ringtail). This patched Nautilus is also available for Ubuntu 12.10 and 12.04 in the same PPA, as you probably already know.

Patched Nautilus 3.4 dual pane


The Nautilus 3.4 package in the WebUpd8 Experiments PPA also comes with all the patches from Ubuntu (12.10) (as opposed to Nemo for instance, a Nautilus 3.4 fork that has a very nice set of features as well).



Install the (SolusOS) patched Nautilus 3.4 in Ubuntu


Note: if you're using the GNOME 3 PPA, you have Nautilus 3.8 so the instructions below won't work! This is only for those who are using the official Nautilus 3.6 packages from the Ubuntu 13.04 (or 12.10 and 12.04) repositories.

Also, please note that if you encounter bugs, I cannot fix them since I'm not a developer and I only maintain the PPA. However, if that happens, you can easily revert the changes.

To install the patched Nautilus 3.4 in Ubuntu 13.04 Raring Ringtail (it's also available for Ubuntu 12.10 and 12.04), use the following commands:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/experiments
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
killall nautilus
(it seems "nautilus -q" doesn't always work if you've upgraded / downgraded Nautilus)

Warning: if the dist-upgrade command tries to remove some packages, it means your system is broken and you need to fix this before proceeding; do not continue with the upgrade if that's the case.

That's it! Now open Nautilus and you should have the SolusOS patched Nautilus 3.4.

By default, you'll get a Computer icon on the desktop. If you don't want this, use the following command:
gsettings set org.gnome.nautilus.desktop computer-icon-visible false



Reverting the changes


If you want to remove the patched Nautilus 3.4 and go back to the Nautilus version you were using before adding our PPA, use the following commands to purge the WebUpd8 Experiments PPA:
sudo apt-get install ppa-purge
sudo ppa-purge ppa:webupd8team/experiments
killall nautilus