FTP Managers Filezilla vs. gFTP vs. Nautilus

Since I’m a webmaster, I obviously need to upload things. When I was on freeservers.com (very bad), and Geocities (pretty bad), there was a little web-based ‘File Manager’, which did all the uploading and manipulation of my files. It was bad. Slow, non-intuitive, clumsy, you name it.

So one of the many reasons I’m now on andrewmin.com is that I can use FTP (File Transfer Protocol) to upload things. Dreamhost has ‘WebFTP’, which is marginally better than the ‘File Manager’s. So I just use (much, much) better third-party apps to do it instead. I’ve used three. Filezilla, and Whirlpool (just kidding, Filezilla, gFTP and Nautilus–I felt like messing with the people who don’t read the title) (Note to self: If FLOSS app is ever made, name it Whirlpool )

(Edit: I actually made Whirlpool….)

In keeping with the style of this blog, I’m just going to spill my thoughts out (in a concise way, I hope (!) )

• Nautilus is beautiful.
• Filezilla is functional. Sure, it has a GUI, but it has a GUI to be functional, not to be pretty.
• gFTP is very similar to Filezilla, except you might convince me it’s prettier. It’s probably personal preference.
• Assuming Nautilus is your File Manager, it’s very nice–the FTP server is just like another drive. It even shows up when you hit ‘Browse’ in something.
• This means that you can open up a webpage in your IDE, and when you hit save it’ll be uploaded.
• I haven’t clocked it, but I think Filezilla and gFTP are faster than Nautilus.
• Filezilla works in Windows.
• Nautilus and gFTP don’t.
• You’ve probably noticed by now that Filezilla and gFTP are very similar. The three main differences are:

1. Operating System compatibility.
2. The way you use it. Filezilla is drag and drop–very easy and intuitive. gFTP is a bit more complicated–you select a file(s), and then hit the “->” button to copy it to the server. Which is actually safer….
3. gFTP has a really easy interface for getting files off “FTP, FTPS (control connection only), HTTP, HTTPS, SSH and FSP” websites (quote from the official site). It even has preloaded bookmarks of common ones–such as Debian and SuSE.
   

• If you have this much time to spend reading about FTP clients, than you’re probably fine with either one

Summary

If you have Windows, use Filezilla. If you have Linux but not GNOME (and use Thunar or Konqueror or something) don’t mess with Nautilus, just investigate FTP with your own File Manager. If you do have GNOME, then use Nautilus, unless you’re the type to upload a LOT of files at one time, infrequently, or you just want a slight edge in speed.

As for Filezilla vs. gFTP…make your own decision. If FTP managers were more popular in general, that would probably be a flame war comparable to GNOME/KDE or Vi(m)/Emacs.

In short, this pretty much boils down to appearance vs. function, which I can’t hope to compare

The solution? Do what I do–use both. Nautilus for editing, Filezilla/gFTP for adding.