When comparing ROX Desktop vs SpaceFM, the Slant community recommends SpaceFM for most people. In the question“What are the best file managers for UNIX-like systems?” SpaceFM is ranked 11th while ROX Desktop is ranked 24th. The most important reason people chose SpaceFM is:
Just right click on any menu or menu option (including the context menu itself) and you'll be allowed to customize it. This lets you add support or integration for features you find missing.
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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 Incredibly customizable
Just right click on any menu or menu option (including the context menu itself) and you'll be allowed to customize it. This lets you add support or integration for features you find missing.
Pro Minimal dependencies
It only needss gtk, udev, desktop-file-util and shared-mime-info which is available in most systems.
Pro Highly extensible
Functionalities can be extended by user scripts as plugins. Some scripts can also be downloaded from https://github.com/IgnorantGuru/spacefm-plugins/wiki. Plugins can be exported too.
Pro Tab and panel support
SpaceFM supports up to 4 individually customizable panels as well as multi-tabbed file management.
Pro No back seat driver
Does not obstruct professional work by engrossing root warnings.
Pro Desktop management support
Can be used to set wallpaper and desktop icons with high configuration support.
Pro Easily open folder as root
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 Gtk-2 and 3 support
Available in gtk2 and gtk3.
Pro Intuitive and extendable through plug-ins
Great UI, easy to use and configure, several plug-ins available to make everyday tasks even easier.
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 Ugly
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.