Article · Wikipedia archive · Last revised May 30, 2026

GnomeVFS

GnomeVFS was an abstraction layer of the GNOME platform for the reading, writing and execution of files. Before GNOME 2.22 GnomeVFS was primarily used by the appropriate versions of Nautilus file manager and other GNOME applications.

Last revised
May 30, 2026
Read time
≈ 1 min
Length
175 w
Citations
3
Source
GnomeVFS
Operating systemLinux, BSD
PlatformGNOME
Typeabstraction layer for files systems
Websitedeveloper.gnome.org/gnome-vfs/

GnomeVFS (short for GNOME Virtual File System) was an abstraction layer of the GNOME platform for the reading, writing and execution of files. Before GNOME 2.22 GnomeVFS was primarily used by the appropriate versions of Nautilus file manager (renamed to GNOME Files) and other GNOME applications.

A cause of confusion is the fact that the file system abstraction used by the Linux kernel is also called the virtual file system (VFS) layer. This is however at a lower level.

Due to perceived shortcomings of GnomeVFS1 a replacement called GVfs was developed. GVfs is based on GIO and allows partitions to be mounted through FUSE.2

With the release of GNOME 2.22 in April 2008, GnomeVFS was declared deprecated in favor of GVfs and GIO, requesting that developers not use it in new applications.3

References

References

External links