PCManFM was the default file manager for CrunchBang and is relaced by Thunar. PCManFM is extremely lightweight and allows you to open up different directories in multiple tabs.
In the top level menu go to Edit –> Preferences and under the general tab, untick open files with single tick.
Files can be opened as root under the top level 'tool' menu by selecting 'open current folder as root', for an explanation of root see this explanation.
Files can be extracted and compressed through the right click context menu as extract or compress.
PCManFM can be set to manage your desktop, this has the advantage of being able to display your folders on the desktop, see here for details.
In PCManFM when you delete something it is gone, there is no trash folder. It will ask for confirmation before removing anything however. If you really want a trash folder you will need to install another file manager such as APPLICATIONS Thunar; instructions for installing it are here.
By default, Pcmanfm can't access NTFS partitions, two ways of accessing them are as follows:
you can install ntfs-config a GUI application, see here for details on installing applications. see here. To run, in a terminal type:
gksu ntfs-config
To add it to your main menu see DESKTOP Configuring the Openbox Menu using the command given above.
Execute the following command in a terminal to mount a partition in read-write mode (package ntfs-3g needs to be installed):
sudo mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sdb1 /mnt -o force
(sdb1 in this command should be replaced by the correct drive).
Ubuntu One can be installed on CrunchBang, it is designed for use with Ubuntu's Nautilus file manager, but can work without it with a small loss of functionality. Instructions for doing so here
Again you can use Dropbox with Pcmanfm, but its is also designed primarily for use with Nautilus, heres a howto to show you how to set it up.
PCManFM is currently being rewritten (version 0.9.3 available, March 2010 see the SourceForge page).