I've been using Linux as my desktop for a few months now and enjoying it after using MS for too long.
The problem that remains is an image viewer. I used to use FastStone and still can using Wine but it doesn't work well that way.

Does anyone know of an image viewer that's similar to FS?
Gwenview for example doesn't work for me. Plus, it caches every single image which seems ridiculous.
I have tried a bunch of viewers but don't want to keep installing things that might eventually break the desktop since it's my first time using this.

Basically looking for an image viewer that has previews of the images in directories, has lots of settings including being able to fully disable caching, slideshow, etc.
Mainly, I'd like something that gives me the ability to prevent caching.

Thank you for any help someone can provide.

Not sure what you are looking for, getting along with gwenview... but perhaps these are some new ideas for you:

Previews in Dolphin
https://old.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/cp8tat/how_do_i_get_kdedolphin_to_display_thumbnails_for/

FastStone and Alternatives
https://alternativeto.net/software/faststone-image-viewer/
You can also filter it down to Linux.

IrfanView
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IrfanView

IrfanView runs pretty well in WINE and I installed it because sometimes I just need its vast features for batch conversion.

Hi,

I'll take a look at the links.

FastStone has preview like Gwenview but it never shows the full list. It only shows the first 5 or so images then it's a white screen. I can use the keyboard to keep moving downward and then see the next images but they don't preview and no list shows up. Not really sure how to better explain that but basically, I think wine is not working right on my system since it does other things.

I found gwenview to be usable but do not like that it caches every single image I look at. I've never found a way to disable that useless feature for my needs so that viewer doesn't work for me. Dolphin is ok but nothing close to FastStone.

I've looked at several solutions, downloaded and try a number and nothing (for my uses) is like FastStone.
This post is really for someone that loves FastStone as I do and has found something very similar.

Weird, its browser shows for me thumbs all and any pictures. Also it doesn't use cache - i can hear my HDD grabbing it (and couldn't find any cache files).

FYI: Version 20.12.3 (from Debian11)

Oh, wait: *Bummer* found something in
~/.cache/thumbnails/

Yikes, slowly killing my NVMe with writing this sh*t (+800MB, 50k files) instead of just reading on demand? So I deleted it and started gwenview again and generated thumbnails. It didn't generate any in cache, though. Checked Dolphin and, yes, Dolphin was the culprit here, not GwenView...

Found something else of interest:
https://docs.kde.org/trunk5/en/gwenview ... anced.html

On my Manjaro system, it's maddening.
So many things get cached and I found that the default settings for firefox was using some proxy and external DNS servers that I did not want.
I have my own DNS servers so that was one heck of a surprise. It was using cloudflare.

Also for me, gwenview caches everything I look at in that directory structure, cache/thumbnails/.
It fills the drive and causes writes that aren't needed. I do a lot of image related stuff so all this caching is a waste in every way but no way to disable it.

Qimgv. Fast, configurable.https://imgur.com/a/eZp1Rqz
Nomacs comes close in config options, but I'd say that in qt land, qimgv is a very good one. Supports scripts etc..
Does video, gif...thumbnail cache can be disabled.
Themeable and QT_STYLE_OVERRIDE supported ( screenshot uses kvantum).

dzon wrote:Qimgv. Fast, configurable.https://imgur.com/a/eZp1Rqz
Nomacs comes close in config options, but I'd say that in qt land, qimgv is a very good one. Supports scripts etc..
Does video, gif...thumbnail cache can be disabled.
Themeable and QT_STYLE_OVERRIDE supported ( screenshot uses kvantum).

Thank you. I'll check that out. Which ever I end up using, I'll be sure to come back to share that if it might help someone else.

So far, it's the closest I've come. Certainly not Faststone but closer than everything I tried.
Thanks for suggesting it.

If you want more editing possibilities you might wanna consider xnviewmp. But. It's kinda..um...oldschool layout and I have no idea about the caching thing. But yeah, in terms of your demands for a non-caching fast image viewer, qimgv is a good one.
Ps: If you should use scripts with it, bash is the way to go. Could be simple ones to which you can assign a shortcut.
Examples:
1) open in gimp:
#!/bin/bash
gimp "$1"

2) set as wallpaper:
#!/bin/bash
/home/john/.local/share/applications/ksetwallpaper.py "$1"