How to install Nautilus Coverflow on Ubuntu

If you know what Gloobus is, you won't want to miss Coverflow. One of the best new features Apple introduced with its MacOS X Leopard was Quicklook, a document previewer built into your file manager that allows us to see the content of any file (video, audio, text, image, etc.) in an instant. Globe brings exactly that functionality to Linux, specifically as an extension to Gnome's file browser, Nautilus.

It works exactly the same way: we select the file in Nautilus, press the space key and an auxiliary window with the file's contents instantly opens.

Spectacularly fast, especially when combined with the Coverflow visualization you see in the video, which looks like album artwork. For now, it supports the most popular formats ( PDF , TXT , JPG , PSD , MP3, MPG , etc.), but since it's designed as an expandable system, extending its compatibility should be relatively simple.

It's not yet in the main repositories, but you can request it from Ubuntu and other repositories on their website .

Install Clutter View in Nautilus

First, you have to install the "clutter" dependencies. Download the .deb packages listed below and install them.

For Karmic 32bit
libclutter-1.0-0_1.0.10-0ubuntu1~ricotz1_i386.deb
libclutter-1.0-dev_1.0.10-0ubuntu1~ricotz1_i386.deb
libclutter-gtk-0.10-0_0.10.2-1~ppa9.10+1_i386.deb
libclutter-gtk-0.10-dev_0.10.2-1~ppa9.10+1_i386.deb

For Karmic 64bit
libclutter-1.0-0_1.0.10-0ubuntu1~ricotz1_amd64.deb
libclutter-1.0-dev_1.0.10-0ubuntu1~ricotz1_amd64.deb
libclutter-gtk-0.10-0_0.10.2-1~ppa9.10+1_amd64.deb
libclutter-gtk-0.10-dev_0.10.2-1~ppa9.10+1_amd64.deb

Nautilus

Once that is done, we download the latest version of Nautilus-Elementary:

• cd
• bzr branch lp: nautilus-elementary
• cd nautilus-elementary
• sudo aptitude build-dep nautilus
• ./autogen.sh –prefix = / usr
• make && sudo make install

Then, we restart nautilus (killall nautilus).

And that's it!

Open a folder and enable the Coverflow effect via View> Clutter View. If you click on the Coverflow you can slide the different elements that make up the folder using the mouse wheel or the arrows (left and right) on the keyboard.

It's still alpha

Don't forget that, despite being very visually appealing, it is still an alpha version. That said, if you have a lot of problems you should try the GIT version of Clutter.