What is GVfs?
GVfs (GNOME Virtual file system) is an open-source virtual file system designed specifically to integrate with the GNOME desktop environment on Linux. It provides a layer that enables users and applications to access remote file systems such as FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, SMB and more using the same API as local files.
Some key features and benefits of GVfs include:
- File system abstraction - Makes remote files systems appear as part of the local file system hierarchy for ease of access.
- URL based mounts - File systems can be mounted simply using a URL.
- Support for popular protocols - Comes with backends that support protocols like FTP, SFTP, HTTP, WebDAV, SMB and more.
- Trash support - Provides a trash can for remote as well as local files.
- File monitoring support - Ability to monitor remote files for changes just like local files.
- Streaming file transfers - Supports streaming of read/write between file systems for better memory management.
- Secure authentication agents - Integrates with local keyring services for secure authentication.
By providing file access transparency and consistency between local and remote locations, GVfs aims to simplify file access and management for users within the Gnome ecosystem. It is installed by default in major Gnome Linux distributions like Ubuntu, Fedora and Debian.