When comparing ROX Desktop vs pcmanfm-qt, the Slant community recommends ROX Desktop for most people. In the question“What are the best file managers for UNIX-like systems?” ROX Desktop is ranked 24th while pcmanfm-qt is ranked 36th. The most important reason people chose ROX Desktop is:
Programs open noticeably faster with ROX Desktop than with most other Desktop Environments.
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Fast
Programs open noticeably faster with ROX Desktop than with most other Desktop Environments.
Pro Official packages for major distributions
ROX can be built from source like many other solutions or can be installed from official packages available for all the major distributions (Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, openSUSE, Mandriva and Slackware).
Pro Singular load/save dialog
Instead of learning and navigating a multitude of file dialogs, simply drag and drop files between your app and your folders.
Pro Can open folder as root
PCManFM can open different folders as root, this way you don't have to use the terminal to move around files for which you need root permission.
Pro Simple
PCManFM is a very lightweight and simple file manager.
Pro Has a lot of features
... that only Dolphin, Krusader, Nemo & Nautilus has onboard -
but this one is a small footprint reliable friend.
Cons
Con Discontinued
discontinued since years, only the filemanager, the terminal and zeroinstall are still developed
Con Very ugly UI
Con Redundant default configuration
Because speed is one of the main points and objectives of ROX, the default configuration can be redundant for some and it's design also makes a lot of assumptions on how users prefer to work.
Con Some operations are slow
Because it tries to be as lightweight as possible and tries to use very little RAM. This can unfortunately lead to it being slow sometimes.