Switched on Win10 pc today and it wouldn't boot.

What it doesn't know is that I've been experimenting with Linux Ubuntu/Mint on a spare PC, have invested $200 in guide books and am very impressed. So impressed that I'm seriously tempted not to repair the Win10 pc and 'go Linux'. Then I realised ....

I have thousands of JPEG, PDF, PNG and similar files. I use a Win-Explorer replacement "Directory Opus" (screenshots here) which gives my live thumbnail previews of image files AND PDF first pages. When you have ten thousand engineering PDFs and you are looking for one, if you can recall the general layout of the first page, the thumbnailer will get you to it very fast, infinitely faster than trying to hunt for a file name.

So, my hurdle is this. I can't live without being able to see thumbnails for PDFs. is there any way to have Linus auto-build thumbnails when pointed at a Windows (or more accurately) Synology NAS where these are stored?

Thank you all very much. Nothing would please me more than moving lock, stock and barrel to Linux.

For most Windows and MAC ways of doing things you'll usually find multiple Linux alternatives.

I've not worked with Directory Opus but a quick search for alternatives gave multiple hits including a page that list several alternatives. You might want to see if any of those fit your needs.
https://alternativeto.net/software/d...platform=linux

Interestingly on looking up Directory Opus it shows it was originally written for AmigaOS and later ported to Windows. I'm surprised they didn't port to Linux.

I think many (if not all) of the popular file browsers in Linux will do thumbnails of PDFs (first page).

I personally use XFCE4's default file browser, Thunar. Its default settings are to do thumbnail preview icons of PDFs, images, videos, etc. You can change whether or not it will do thumbnails, as well as an option to only do thumbnails on local files.

The default icon size for Thunar is pretty darn small, but you can customize them to be huge if you want.

Whoops had two threads open (in tabs) and posted in the wrong one: https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...6/#post5781485