GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 786881
Nautilus too slow when opening folders with too many files (3k+)
Last modified: 2021-06-18 15:55:43 UTC
I know its dumb having 3k+ files in one folder only, but sometimes it happens. Specially if you have file servers or maybe accessing huge files from CERN, but it happens. Surprisingly, Windows Explorer can open folders with 3k+ files without a hitch. So clearly, something should hopefully be improved in Nautilus (Gnome File Manager). PS: I did not file this bug so somebody could explain why its slow, I filed it so Gnome File Manager can become the best File manager it should be! Cheers!
Yeah, we are aware. It just need more work in core parts of Nautilus :)
Glad, its being taken care off! :) Let me know if there are software related thing I can help with.
I think I have an Idea where the slowness maybe. 1.) Nautilus does not do multicore processing 2.) Nautilus does not do lazy loading, I think it was trying to display all the files at once, while it can rather just render what is just visible in screen. Another issue maybe a mutex lock or some other lock that is being processed for each file. Possible suggestions For no. 1, I dont have idea how to fix that. For no. 2, I think nautilus can store the arrangement and the paths of all files of the whole disk and then just retrieve the first few from there. Building the cache could not be that big for average desktop usage, like 1M files, that would be equivalent to 1Gig disk cache. It could be faster if the cache is stored per folder. Maybe in Explorer.exe it read that cache from the NTFS directly. I hope there could be the same counter part for Linux partitions.
> 1.) Nautilus does not do multicore processing Nautilus actually does it, you can see it with gdb. > 2.) Nautilus does not do lazy loading It does, look at nautilus-files-view.c and the "display_pending_files" function.
A related bug report and conversation going back several years: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nautilus/+bug/869793
GNOME is going to shut down bugzilla.gnome.org in favor of gitlab.gnome.org. As part of that, we are mass-closing older open tickets in bugzilla.gnome.org (resources are unfortunately quite limited so not every ticket can get handled). If you can still reproduce the situation described in this ticket in a recent and supported software version of Files (nautilus), then please follow https://wiki.gnome.org/GettingInTouch/BugReportingGuidelines and create a new ticket at https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/nautilus/-/issues/ Thank you for your understanding and your help.