Wow, I never really thought about this, but is Finder still the only major file manager with a proper miller column view? I use it exclusively to a point where I find that using other file managers (Windows Explorer, Thunar, Nautilus, etc) feels clunky and inefficient in comparison.

Yeah, same. Really fell in love with Miller columns and don't have a good file manager replacement on other OS.

Even worse, apparently both Thunar and Nautilus dropped their implementations.

I'm pretty sure they're proper implemented in PCmanFM.

GNUstep / Windowmaker.

Aesthetic. How feasible is it to actually use whatever file manager GNUstep has outside of it?

GNUstep is just another widget kit, though one that's intended to work together. You're under no obligation.

I use Windowmaker largely without the GNUstep file manger -- bash is my preferred interface. But it's there, and you can run that freestanding under any desktop or windowmanager you want.

Part of the beauty and/or asthetic confusion, as well as freedom, of Linux / BSD.

Where are you going?

Torn between Windows and Linux at the moment. I know Elementary's file manager has Miller columns, but it's a pain to get it on Fedora, which I prefer over Debian-based distros. For Windows I have no idea.

Windows 7 is supported until 2020, in case you liked that one. That should at least give you time to think things over :)

How has your experience with Elementary been?

I've been thinking of getting a MacBook for my mom in a few months. In the meantime, I had to reinstall her linux laptop, so I thought I'd give her Elementary because I heard good things about it, and from the screenshots I figured it would be like halfway between linux and mac, so might ease the transition a little.

But in the end, I got so frustrated with it I switched it back to Xubuntu!