This applies to the last two or three distributions of Linux that use Thunar as file manager, notably Xubuntu or others using Xfce for the desktop. The problem is that the first time you open the file manager, you have to wait a very long time to see anything. This can persist for several minutes after booting, even with multicore systems with lots of RAM. Some people also get error messages.
The reason seems to be that Thunar is waiting for gvfs-xxx to return with network devices. Rather than allowing the user to breathe by showing them the interface, it does nothing until this process returns (30 seconds to several minutes). Reportedly there is a bug with one of the gvfs modules that I won’t pretend to have analyzed in detail. The Thunar behavior is known to the developers, and I believe they are working on it… but what to do for now?
Well here’s a fix that works for me on Xubuntu 11.10. Do this:
sudo nano /usr/share/gvfs/mounts/network.mount
(with editor of your choice if nano doesn’t do it for you)… This file is only a few lines long. Change this:
Exec=/some/exec AutoMount=true
to this:
#Exec=/some/exec Exec='' AutoMount=false
The next time you reboot, you’ll start off with a usable and responsive GUI. Yay.
One or the other change to network.mount might even be enough. Note that this will disable Thunar’s (ill-fated) search for remote drives — not much of a fix if you need that functionality, I admit. But if you need your file manager to mount remote drives, you can always try another manager.