https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1457652 Details (as copied from downstream bug report) Passwd contains the fields: Username: It is used when user logs in. It should be between 1 and 32 characters in length. User ID Info: The comment field. It allow you to add extra information about the users such as user’s full name, phone number etc. This field use by finger command. It appears that Thunar shows in the column owner the "User ID Info" followed by the Username in paranthesis. This can be very usefull for a lot of scenario's. However, I would greatly prefer that Thumar just shows the Username. The reason is that all command line utilities, like ls, show the Username by default. I'm quite sure that a lot of linux users will appreciate this conformity. Therefor, I suggest to make a configuration option by which the linux standard can be enforced, i.e. showing passwd Username.
Alexander Schwinn referenced this bugreport in commit d774b40c3f8f2c1559ad8ffde340d318aee330e6 Only show additional "real_name" of user in detailed_view if it is different from "name" (bug #13648) https://git.xfce.org/xfce/thunar/commit?id=d774b40c3f8f2c1559ad8ffde340d318aee330e6
It's a bit more complex. Thunar somehow extracts the "name" and the "realname" of the user from "getpwuid" ... dont ask me how to set this "realname", but it looks like it can be different from "name". "realname" can be NULL in some cases, than only "name" is shown. What I finally did: If both are identical ( which usually is the case ) than only name is displayed. Like that the current functionality is kept without adding another, possibly confusing, configuration option. Fixed for master, will be released in thunar 1.8