[HN Gopher] Double Commander
___________________________________________________________________
Double Commander
Author : smartmic
Score : 121 points
Date : 2022-08-03 13:57 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (doublecmd.github.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (doublecmd.github.io)
| yardshop wrote:
| Neat to see this here, I just started using this app a couple
| months ago and I like it.
|
| I've been a big fan of alternative file managers for years. I
| loved LIST back in the DOS days as an alternative to DIR =) where
| you could easily browse folders, and view files in regular or hex
| view with a keypress.
|
| After moving to Windows, I wanted something similar and found The
| V File Viewer (used to be called V, The File Viewer) by Charles
| Prineas (https://www.fileviewer.com). This has hex view, CSV
| view, and many other useful features. It can be set up in a dual-
| paned fashion similar to the *-Commander line of apps, but with
| its own approach. I used Total Commander for a while too and
| registered it, but didn't stick with it.
|
| Recently I wanted something similar that I could put on computers
| at work and share with staff, and found Double Commander and like
| it a lot. It has its own approach and quirks as well, but I'm
| getting used to it.
|
| I also like that fact that it's written in Free Pascal and
| Lazarus. I used to do a lot with Delphi and this has gotten me
| back into that language with the thought that I might be able to
| contribute some changes at some point.
|
| Also along those lines, just the other day I learned about
| CudaText which is a very nice open source programmer's editor
| similar to SublimeText. It's also written in Free Pascal and
| Lazarus. I'm happier using this and sharing with staff than I am
| with Visual Studio Code which comes with too much overbearing MS-
| ness for my preferences.
| whartung wrote:
| To be fair, the majority of my "file manager" work is in my IDE,
| or other applications.
|
| If there's any other file motion, odds are it'll be the command
| line for me.
|
| I'm not pedantic about it, it's just how it is.
|
| My current gross abuse at this level is with the Mac
| Page/Numbers/Keynote/TextEdit applications that work with Apple
| document model.
|
| I know I should, I but I just don't close anything. For quick
| letters in Pages, I just reuse the same template over and over
| and print it out. It's not untoward for me to have 30+ "Untitled
| XXX" documents open. Just one of the many zillion windows I
| routinely have open. I have 50 documents open in Preview. So, my
| "file manager" is the Windows menu.
|
| The pervasive persistence of the Apple Document model is very
| abuse friendly.
| majkinetor wrote:
| IDEs have notoriously bad file managers. I havily use VSCode
| CTRL P but that is when I know exactly what I want. If not, I
| need visuals and nothing beats good file manager.
| mmsimanga wrote:
| I often "favorite" such threads because of the alternatives
| listed in the comments. I use Multi Commander[0]. I have tried a
| few of the others over the years but for the last five years or
| more I haven't moved from Multi Commander.
|
| [0] http://multicommander.com/
| liotier wrote:
| Someone liked it https://developer.run/31 - and expresses
| preference over Dolphin, which I don't understand because I find
| that Dolphin does all that but with the benefits of KDE
| integration.
| eterps wrote:
| DirOpus for Amiga was my first two-panel filemanager.
|
| Screenshot for nostalgia :) ->
| http://www.abime.net/img/files/applications/DOpus/DOpus4_2.p...
| blackhaz wrote:
| Alas, error 403.
| TonyTrapp wrote:
| Hotlink protection. Hit Return on the URL bar to reload it
| with a clean referrer, and it will display.
| mhd wrote:
| I really found it surprising that so few of the PC based
| orthodox filemanagers adopted the DOpus style of user-defined
| buttons and multiple rows thereof at the bottom, instead
| keeping with the few function key-based operations inherited
| from a time when there was simple no other option.
|
| (I'm aware of Gentoo and Worker doing that on Linux)
| dazzawazza wrote:
| While it is nostalgia, I use Directory Opus 12 every day on my
| windows PC.
|
| Really speeds up my everyday work in game development.
| UberFly wrote:
| Directory Opus addict here too. It is my MVP in pretty much
| everything I do on my PC.
| alexalx666 wrote:
| MC meets MS Word, no thanks, MC already has everything + fluffy
| feeling you are on 80386. Sometimes I just go there to relax
| [deleted]
| TonyTrapp wrote:
| Started using it a couple of years ago when I was mostly using a
| single operating system, now it saves my sanity by providing the
| same good file browsing experience across all systems.
| georgia_peach wrote:
| I've been playing with this on Linux. Lots of features. Built-in
| everything: editor, viewer, searcher, batch-renamer, grepper,
| etc. It all seems to work. No crashes. FreePascal is fantastic
| for writing things like this.
|
| If I were stuck on Windows without Cygwin (coreutils), this would
| do.
| witrak wrote:
| >I've been playing with this on Linux.
|
| Short question: does it grab Tab keystroke or allow to use it
| in shell normally?
|
| Lack of shell Tab expansion was the second reason I never
| accepted MC in Linux even though I was a fan of NC. The first
| was the lack of F1-F10 keys in the sub keypad on the left side
| of the classic IBM PC keyboard in all keyboards available to me
| except the one I bought in '92...
| georgia_peach wrote:
| It opens a separate xterm window on debian. Does it have an
| integrated terminal on windows?
| darthcloud wrote:
| I used to be a big user of Total Commander back in the Win9x days
| (then Windows Commander)
|
| I was actually too much used to it and I had a hard time using my
| friends computer at all using the default Windows explorer.
|
| I probably updated to WinXP at some point and didn't reinstall
| it. Never felt the need to to install a double windows file
| manager since then. Even if it's clearly better than the default
| option.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Just two years ago I had a developer I worked with on a regular
| basis, he is a Total Commander power user. He never opens
| Explorer or navigates the file system outside Total Commander.
|
| There is still a ton of weird Windows utilities being developed
| and maintained. While I personally don't like the platforms,
| there is a lot of safety in knowing that you can learn a tool
| and then almost 30 years later, it's still available.
|
| I'm still confident that if you want to future-proof your
| application, C++ and Windows is the platform to go for. Even if
| I don't like it.
| hulitu wrote:
| Windows explorer is almost unusable. Microsoft poluting it
| with Downloads, Images, Videos and My Documents virtual
| folders (just to name a few) didn't help either.
| ziddoap wrote:
| What specific aspects do you find to be almost _unusable_?
|
| There's room for improvement ( _new_ features are always
| nice), sure, but 'almost unusable' is quite the
| exaggeration when you consider that there is ~1B Windows
| installs and yet outside of small tech circles I've never
| once heard someone complain about Explorer or its
| usability.
|
| It Just Works, pretty much all the time, and is easy enough
| and intuitive enough that I haven't even had to explain it
| to the tech-illiterates in my circle.
|
| Does the Downloads folder really make you say 'this is
| unusable'?
| desindol wrote:
| Just let me replace win+e without ahk or registry editing.
| tveyben wrote:
| Total commander is linkes to Win+1 for me, no need for Win+E!
| Win+2 is for Notepad++
|
| Those two are my most used shortcuts on Windows.
|
| Must give double commander a test run on Linux (and see if
| that's better than TotalCommander in Wine).
|
| TCM shortcuts are so second nature that I can't imagine
| anything else (never found a good solution did OSX _)
|
| _ I am too old to call it by it's new name MacOS, I also call
| the command key for the Apple key ;-)
| yardshop wrote:
| To expand on what tveyben mentioned, the first 10 items in your
| Windows task bar can be opened by pressing Win+1 through Win+0.
| If you pin items there, they will always have that keyboard
| shortcut.
|
| Even so, as much as I prefer using alternate file managers, I
| still like having Win+E for regular old Explorer.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Too bad it's not TUI, I was hoping to see an improved version of
| midnight commander :)
| rob74 wrote:
| I'm a big fan of two-panel file managers, starting with the
| ancestor of them all, Norton Commander under DOS. Under Windows,
| I used Total Commander. I even started developing an NC clone
| myself with Delphi, but only got as far as an "alpha version".
| After switching to Linux, I used Krusader for a few years, but
| then discovered and switched to Double Commander. Since it is
| developed with Lazarus/FreePascal, maybe I will be able to apply
| some of the ideas I had for my Delphi NC clone to it (if I can
| find the time and sympathy from the maintainers)?
| BeetleB wrote:
| > Under Windows, I used Total Commander.
|
| I would recommend Far for Windows users. Much more like the
| original Norton Commander.
|
| https://www.farmanager.com/
| gnuj3 wrote:
| Why would you want it to be like Norton Commander while Total
| Commander is far superior?
| BeetleB wrote:
| I haven't used Total Commander, but I know Far is extremely
| capable. Do you know what Total Commander does that Far
| doesn't?
|
| I personally picked Far as I was very used to the layout
| and keybindings of Norton Commander. I like to do
| everything with the keyboard, and didn't need to learn new
| keys.
|
| Also, Far is free.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| This is really "in addition to total commander" as far as I'm
| concerned. Far is great on the CLI, but when you're _not_
| working with terminals you generally want a normal looking
| application. Both Far and TC are basically "two sides of the
| same coin", you can use either one, but using both in their
| respective environments makes life even better.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > Far is great on the CLI, but when you're _not_ working in
| the CLI you want a normal looking application.
|
| I have Far as an icon on my desktop/shortcuts bar. I just
| click it and it runs. When I quit it (F10), the window goes
| away. Most people will not even realize it's a CLI program.
| What exactly would be the problem using it this way?
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| I never said there was a problem, I said that having
| _both_ vastly increases usability. If you're the kind of
| person who looks at a DOS era UI and goes "this is fine,
| what's the problem?" then there isn't one for you.
|
| But if you're the kind of person who wants to see
| terminal graphics when they're doing terminal work, and a
| normal user interface that follows the OS conventions
| that every other user interface uses as well when you're
| doing "normal" work, then having both installed so you
| can run each in the context they make sense in vastly
| improves your computerin' life.
|
| (And if you're the kind of person who rarely has to use
| the terminal (or only ever use the terminal inside a code
| editor, IDE, or other application that follows OS UI
| conventions) or literally never uses a terminal, then
| something that looks like a 1980's DOS application is
| almost certainly going to be a hard nope)
| realharo wrote:
| Yeah, Far actually has pretty good integration with the
| command line, which is a must for a good file manager - and a
| file manager is a very natural fit for many CLI workflows.
| gigel82 wrote:
| Love it. It's the first thing I install on macOS and Linux; for
| Windows I already own several Total Commander licenses.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| What do you use on macOS?
| gigel82 wrote:
| I'm still using it from when I last installed it on my macOS,
| didn't realize he deprecated mac support :( . FWIW, the
| installer is called "doublecmd-0.9.10-9640.qt.x86_64.dmg" if
| you want to look it up online somewhere.
|
| I'll guess I have to look for an alternative now... sigh
| res0nat0r wrote:
| I've really liked Altap Salamnder for Windows. Lots of features,
| and freeware too. https://www.altap.cz/
| ihateolives wrote:
| I used it for quite some time, even bought a license but then
| dropped it when when they dragged their feet for years with
| utf8 filename support. I think they never fixed it.
| mobilio wrote:
| I've using it since version 1.52 AFAIK and this is FIRST app i
| install on fresh Windows.
| pkrumins wrote:
| Total Commander is the best commander.
| jrm4 wrote:
| Somewhat unrelated, but I'm still wondering why there still
| appears to be not much of a push for _strong_ GUI filemanager +
| terminal integration. I know Dolphin has it, but it feels not
| quite there.
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| These old school Commander type file managers don't integrate too
| well. Windows 11 side by side pane is fantastic anyway.
|
| I guess it's ideal if you really have to sit down and do busy
| work, but I don't see anything wrong with File
| Explorer........except that obnoxiously excessive side panel that
| forever thinks I want to use OneAnything or weird quick access
| virtual folders that points to something called Documents
| completely separate from my local Documents sigh. They could make
| file explorer a lot simpler.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| Having a hard time finding anything on the site that explains how
| it's different from Total Commander though, other than price. If
| it's just "Total Commander, but free", including TC plugin
| support, I'd be rather surprised if that's even legal? Because if
| it looks and acts effectively the same as a paid application,
| except yours is free, then there is very concrete and intentional
| monetary damage being done.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Competition is not "monetary damages." There are oodles of
| orthodox file managers[1], and several of them are named
| "Commander" so it's not like there is a trademark case here.
| Compatibility with competitors software is also quite well
| established as being legal.
|
| 1:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_manager#Orthodox_file_man...
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| So that's already a fundamental misunderstanding of how the
| law works, whether we like it or not (and make no mistake: I
| don't), competition involves making your own thing with its
| own look and feel, that fills the same market need. This is
| not that: this is a _clone_ of the Total command look and
| feel, in addition to its functionality. So as someone who
| pays for some software, and doesn 't pay for other software
| because it's free: how is this, from a US and EU legal
| perspective, legal rather than preventing a company from
| earning revenue by offering a near-identical clone for free?
|
| If you sell your own brand of cornflakes, with a distinct
| box, even if you contract the exact same third party
| cornflake producing plant (i.e. exactly what happens in the
| laundry detergent industry), that's competition. If you make
| your cornflakes available for free, and you use basically the
| same packaging as Kellogg's to the point where if you showed
| both to someone unfamiliar with the exact styling queues
| they'd go "... aren't these the same?" that's laws being
| broken.
|
| And from the screenshots, this sure does look identical to
| Total Commander. So again: is this actually legal? (it might
| be, I don't know, _which is why I asked_ )
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Okay there are a few things going on here:
|
| 1. A substantially similar product
|
| I think we both agree this is legal (given your laundry
| detergent example)
|
| 2. Confusion for the original product in marketing
| materials (including packaging)
|
| - This relates primarily to trademarks law; I partially
| addressed this in my original comment pointing out that
| simply the name being of the form "X Commander" isn't
| likely an enforceable trademark.
|
| - The DC homepage has a screenshot, then some text, which
| includes the text "it is inspired by Total Commander." This
| seems analogous to a picture of cornflakes followed by
| "compare to Kellogg's Cornflakes"
|
| 3. The UI looking an awful lot like TC
|
| If the icons TC used were copyrighted, and DC used them,
| that's clear copyright infringement, but I don't think this
| is being alleged here.
|
| This gets complicated quickly; the general layout (status
| bar at top, clickable reminders of keyboard shortcuts at
| bottom, two side-by-side panes, &c) did not originate with
| TC, so if DC is in trouble for this, it's not with TC
|
| The great similarity in the general look is at least partly
| to them both using Lazarus, and partly intentional to make
| it easier to use by existing TC users.
|
| The similarities just from using the same toolkit are
| generally fine. I think the point you are raising that
| _when combined with the intentional layout similarities_
| this could rise to the level of product confusion; if the
| buttons all looked very different, but were in the same
| screen positions and did the exact same things, then DC
| would look very different from TC.
|
| As far as copying the "look and feel" _Lotus v. Borland_
| strongly suggests that the interface of an application is
| not subject to copyright. If TC had a design patent or
| trademark on the menu or toolbar look, then they could
| almost certainly enforce this, but it would have had to
| have been registered in advance.
| int_19h wrote:
| Of course it is legal. If you have some know-how that you
| want to protect, that's what patents are for. If you have
| some unique recognizable design that you want to protect,
| that's design patents and trademarks.
|
| But the two-panel file management paradigm predates Total
| Commander by many years - TC itself copied NC - so I doubt
| they would be able to patent anything worthwhile even if
| they tried.
| zem wrote:
| this is a good starting point if you want to explore that
| particular rabbithole:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Look_and_feel#Lawsuits
| arpa wrote:
| You must really love software patents!
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| I hate them with a passion: do not mistake a question based
| on how the world seems to work for being happy with how the
| world works. If I use this, and it gets litigated out of
| existence, I'm right back to "okay so NOW what do I use?".
| ccbccccbbcccbb wrote:
| No it's not about patents and legalese. It's about human(e)
| attitude.
|
| Christian Ghisler has been developing Total Commander for 27
| years, since 1995. While he didn't invent the idea of two-
| pane file manager and more or less reimplemented Norton
| Commander in proper graphics-mode GUI, he added so much more
| to it over those three decades that it wouldn't be right to
| call it a copy of NC; moreover, he didn't ship it for free,
| he priced it at the same $49.
|
| What the author of Copy, sorry, Double Commander does is pure
| and simple dumping. It's like standing next to a bakery and
| giving away same cakes for free. Does that feel right?
|
| I wonder how the development of Double Commander is backed
| financially.
| int_19h wrote:
| Do you have the same attitude towards, say, FreeCiv?
| ccbccccbbcccbb wrote:
| Not into games, but have the same sentiment towards
| Microsoft (with VSCode) and other companies and
| communities which give away software that all but clones
| commercial analogs while drawing profits off something
| else, effectively squeezing those who sell software for a
| living out of business.
| unixhero wrote:
| It is open source, free as in libre, EDIT and as in beer.
| ccbccccbbcccbb wrote:
| From https://doublecmd.github.io
|
| >Double Commander is absolutely free <,comma> open source
| software.
|
| Implies free as in beer as well, unless someone rubs my
| nose into the price stated somewhere on the website.
| mhd wrote:
| It's interesting to see the "decline" of secondary file managers
| on Windows and probably Linux systems, too. Back in the days,
| pretty much any "power user" had their own favorite replacement
| for the built-in stop gap solution. Quite often one of the
| commanders, but I've seen other preferences. There was a pretty
| huge market of shareware (or open source on linux) for this. Next
| to image viewers probably one of the most common third party
| tools.
|
| I rarely see that these days, both from regular users and my
| fellow software developers. Is it because file usage in general
| has declined? Generally mabye, but not in that target
| demographic.
|
| Is it because the system apps have gotten better? Maaaybe. I
| personally wouldn't consider the Win 11 explorer to be that more
| usable than winfile.exe, but people have different thresholds.
|
| Personally, I'd even make the argument that they've become worse
| at times and that they're not even in the same niche, i.e. a
| "file system interface", probably spatial and a more abstracted
| powerful file manager could and should co-exist. Hopefully the
| file selection dialogue then isn't totally unrelated from a UI
| point of view.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| What to use on macOS instead of Finder?
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| By far the best file manager for MacOS is Marta [1]. It is
| the only app that is close to great old Far Manager, which
| sadly only works properly on Windows (it does have Linux and
| MacOS ports, but they are quite far from working smoothly on
| these platforms).
|
| [1]: https://marta.sh/
| specialist wrote:
| Am deeply chagrinned I didn't know about Marta. Thank you!
|
| Seamless archive support FTW.
|
| Also: Marta's config DSL syntax is the closest to The
| Correct Answer(tm) I've seen so far. Further confirming
| author Zhulanow's good taste and technical accumen.
| https://marta.sh/images/features/config.png
|
| Downloading now. Thanks again.
| todd8 wrote:
| I've never heard of Marta before, but I'm going to try it
| out. The clean DSL for configuration looks good, and I
| have to agree that GUI configuration interfaces can be
| _very_ irksome. (I feel like throwing out my networking
| gear after using the GUI to set up VLANs--just give me
| access to the config file that is hidden somewhere.)
| gnuj3 wrote:
| This looks really interesting, thanks for sharing. I guess
| it doesnt require any additional steps in terms of
| replacing Finder, just install and play?
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Yes, pretty much.
| ricketycricket wrote:
| I've been happily using Forklift for years.
| https://binarynights.com/
| themadturk wrote:
| Path Finder is my current alternative. It has quirks, but is
| preferable to Finder.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _Is it because file usage in general has declined? Generally
| mabye, but not in that target demographic._
|
| Absolutely file usage has declined, even among power users.
|
| My god, two decades ago everything was files -- my MP3
| collection, all the photos I'd ever taken, everything I'd ever
| written. My whole life organization was based around organizing
| files inside of folders.
|
| Now it's all Spotify, Photos, Docs. Everything is search-based
| rather than folder-based, _thank god_. A handful of playlists,
| starred items, a handful of folders for select projects, and
| that 's it.
|
| And then all of the power user stuff, when it comes to coding
| or otherwise advanced processing of files with data? It's all
| command-line now, also _thank god_ -- you can do pretty much
| anything you want, rather than be limited to the feature set of
| your secondary file manager. The command line was pretty
| limited in Windows 3.1 and Windows 95. Now we 're thankfully in
| a different era.
| jonathankoren wrote:
| Search is useful, but image search is vastly inferior to
| proper organization. Whenever I search for an image using
| Google or Apple, I never find what I'm looking for. I may
| find something related to the event, but never the actual
| photo. The photo might as well be lost.
|
| The sole advantage to search, is that _no one_ properly
| organizes their photos beyond something like date.
| msravi wrote:
| I still use vifm as a filemanager a lot, and couldn't do
| without it. Bulk renaming of files, moving and categorizing
| downloaded files (documents, books, music, ...). A lot of
| stuff that I download gets cleaned up periodically unless
| it's properly categorized and tucked away. What do you use
| for that? I do use fzf to search, but it's so much easier
| with vifm. vifm also makes bulk operations on filenames a
| breeze with vi keybindings
| themodelplumber wrote:
| > Everything is search-based rather than folder-based, thank
| god
|
| Huh. At the very least I use both and couldn't live without
| both. Especially the really nice, super-subjective folder
| hierarchies that I built myself and know like the back of my
| hand...whether local or in the cloud. No clutter, no folders
| with thousands of different loose files.
| saghm wrote:
| > There was a pretty huge market of shareware (or open source
| on linux) for this.
|
| Maybe I'm just _too_ into the linux lifestyle, but as a full
| time linux user (outside of work where they have me use a
| macbook), I just use the terminal as my file manager. `ls`,
| `cp`, `mv`, `rm`, and then a utility installed to have a CLI
| command for putting things in the trash instead of permanently
| deleting is pretty much all I need.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >Maybe I'm just _too_ into the linux lifestyle, but as a full
| time linux user (outside of work where they have me use a
| macbook), I just use the terminal as my file manager. `ls`,
| `cp`, `mv`, `rm`, and then a utility installed to have a CLI
| command for putting things in the trash instead of
| permanently deleting is pretty much all I need.
|
| I certainly get your point of view. As a long time Unix/Linux
| user, I find that the standard tools (as you mention) are
| great, and I use them most of the time.
|
| However, when dealing with large numbers of files/folders and
| being responsible for their organization/storage, a tool such
| as MidnightCommander[0][1] _can_ be quite useful.
|
| If that's not your use case and/or other tools work better
| for you, that's great!
|
| I'd posit that (lack of) prior experience may impact such
| choices. But IMHO, whatever gets the job done is perfectly
| fine.
|
| [0] https://github.com/MidnightCommander
|
| [1] https://midnight-commander.org/
| p4bl0 wrote:
| I _totally_ get your point of view. Had the same, did the
| same.
|
| If one day you want to try a graphical file manager, I
| suggest Dolphin. See
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32336338 :).
| mhd wrote:
| > Maybe I'm just _too_ into the linux lifestyle
|
| Linux has plenty of file managers. Just like the system that
| ran the original norton commander had copy/dir/etc.
|
| Where does a "lifestyle" come in here?
| saghm wrote:
| I'd guess that the proportion of linux users who prefer to
| use the terminal for file management over a GUI is way
| higher than MacOS or Windows ones. It's not a property of
| the system itself, but more that someone who prefers to do
| things this way would be more likely to use linux than the
| average user. Hence...lifestyle
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| I wonder the same (I've been using 2-panel FMs since late 80s).
| My guess is that younger devs got more familiar with the
| command line and some are not even aware they could do file
| operations even faster and in a more efficient way. Non-devs
| just rarely use files anymore, everything is being done in a
| browser or on their mobile devices.
| FpUser wrote:
| Not sure. I am ok with command line but can not imagine my
| life without 2 panel FM. TotalCmd on Windows and Double
| Commander on Linux desktop or Midnight Commander on text
| mode. In fact Midnight Commander is the first one I install
| on any fresh Linux.
| mhd wrote:
| Sure, more powerful/common command line usage is one reason
| why the default file managers are sufficient. So in a way,
| _Norton Commander_ lost while _NDOS_ won.
|
| And of course I can't speak for "old" Mac users (I started in
| the 00s). Back in the Norton/DOpus days, I didn't know that
| many, so maybe they always were satisfied with the Finder?
| egypturnash wrote:
| Siracusa's rants about the old Spatial Finder aside, I have
| really found that the Column view satisfies most of my
| needs quite easily. Especially if you just open up two
| windows when you need to move files from one place to
| another.
|
| Tagging stuff and using saved searches for it is really
| nice too, Classic had tags but search was a lot slower.
| It's really nice to decide which of my illustration
| commissions I want to work on today by opening a saved
| search for everything with the "commission" and "in
| progress" tags, sorted by last modification date, with big
| icons.
| thom wrote:
| What meaningful file operations do people do day-to-day? I
| download stuff to my Desktop or Downloads folder and regularly
| delete it, but that's only when it's not in a package manager.
| Beyond that, everything's managed by editors/IDEs/web-apps, and
| code mostly has established hierarchies that don't change too
| often. Something has to go horribly wrong for me to ever want
| to do major surgery on files like a deep copy of a directory,
| especially in the age of git. The last major copy operation I
| did was moving my Steam library, which Steam did itself.
|
| Back in the day with Midnight Commander and lynx key bindings,
| it was a nice way to quickly navigate around a codebase and see
| what's up, but these days I'd probably do that on GitHub. Even
| before that, my main use of Norton Commander was editing
| Windows startup files, and creating a parallel cable connection
| to my brother's PC to play DOOM. I can't remember the last time
| I opened my file manager tbh.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Sorry you're not the use case for this. I
| cut/copy/delete/move files hundreds of times per day, across
| both local and remote disks. And I use editors, IDEs, and
| git, too. But the files I cut/copy/delete/move have little or
| nothing to do with software development.
| falcor84 wrote:
| It would perhaps be useful then if you actually describe
| your use cases
| mhd wrote:
| > What meaningful file operations do people do day-to-day?
|
| Copying stuff out of my Downloads folder, for one. I tried
| doing that with MacOs' Alfred for a while (select in finder
| -> shortcut -> fuzzy search destination -> move to), but a
| decent enough bookmark system in a two-panel folder works
| better for me.
|
| I also often just dump new documents in a standard location
| and reorganize it later, as that's more user friendly than
| your average file requester and postpones one of IT and
| life's hard problems.
|
| All in all, pretty similar to what I did on my 286. There's a
| little bit more file search involved (at least on my Mac,
| less so on Linux) and iTunes/cdrip/beets took a lot of effort
| out of organizing music.
|
| Sure, I don't _need_ a secondary fm for that, but then again,
| I don 't really _need_ a git client /IDE, either.
| rgoulter wrote:
| I still appreciate having a tool like ranger for emacs:
| https://github.com/ralesi/ranger.el
|
| It's not quite the two-column file manager; but it's inspired
| by a file manager + preview, with simple keybindings for
| navigating.
| pantulis wrote:
| I think because the metaphor went from being file-centric (you
| choose the file, you launch the app) to app-centric (you open
| the app, then open the file). It's not exactly applicable to
| the file manager arena but I guess most users do not need to
| manage files, they let their apps do it for them.
| [deleted]
| p4bl0 wrote:
| I switched from Mac OS X to Linux (Debian) a bit more than 15
| years ago. At this time on Mac OS X I was barely using the
| Finder at all, I spent all my time in the Terminal and managed
| my files from there.
|
| Once on Linux, I didn't even bother to install a file manager
| at all, I just kept using the terminal. My environment
| consisted in Openbox as a window manager, rxvt-unicode as a
| terminal with Bash as a shell, and then mostly Emacs and
| Firefox (considering only graphical programs).
|
| A few years ago, maybe 2 or 3 I'm not sure, I decided to try to
| experience Linux the way "muggles" do, because I was always
| telling people to use it but I actually never properly used
| what they would if they followed my advice, i.e., Gnome or KDE.
| So I read a bit, compared the two, and decided to give a try to
| KDE.
|
| It was a bit of a pain at the beginning, so my first move was
| to configure everything so that my usual key bindings worked
| again, but I quickly found that I could be as efficient and at
| ease as I was before using KDE Apps as they were intended to be
| used (I even switched from doing my emails in Emacs to using a
| graphical email client!).
|
| Switching from managing files in the terminal to using Dolphin
| has been an amazing experience. Dolphin is probably one of my
| favorite piece of software today. And for things that are
| better done using a shell, you have a terminal at your
| fingertips anytime anywhere with all your settings from Konsole
| (the actual terminal app) thanks to the fantastic KParts
| framework. It even works transparently with remote mount over
| ftps thanks to KIO. Truly this is _amazing_.
|
| It made me love a file manager, which is not something that I
| would have thought possible a few years back, or the years
| before that.
|
| Nowadays I'm slowly switching from Emacs to Kate (this is a bit
| hard and has lead me to become a small KDE contributor to
| improve Kate and the underlying KTextEditor ^^).
| Fnoord wrote:
| ftps isn't an interesting widely used protocol, its legacy.
| You probably meant sftp, a subsystem for SSH which got
| nothing to do with FTP or FTP over SSL (ftps).
|
| Both Konqueror (later Dolphin) and Nautilus have supported
| mounting remote SSH for ages. Yeah, its nice. On Windows you
| can do same with Dokan, and on Linux and macOS CLI with Fuse.
| I mount a USB stick on Linux with CLI, and I mount a remote
| SSH with CLI. Tiling window manager and endless terminals.
| Tho its possible to make KDE tiling, too.
|
| For those who like Sublime Text (command palette) _and_ dual
| pane file manager I can recommend the cross-platform fman.
| p4bl0 wrote:
| Yes thanks, I meant SFTP :).
|
| But my point was mainly that in Dolphin I can open a
| terminal panel in the directory I'm in, and that this works
| even for mounted remote directories. Which is frankly quite
| awesome :).
| r00fus wrote:
| > It's interesting to see the "decline" of secondary file
| managers on Windows and probably Linux systems
|
| I would credit that with actually functional OS-level search
| (Mac OSX 10.5, Win7). Why bother sorting stuff hierarchically
| when you can dump it all in a /Downloads /Movies /Music folder
| and let search find it for you?
|
| It probably also coincides with the rise of mobile devices
| where the paradigm is app-based not file-based.
| hota_mazi wrote:
| I've been a big fan of xPlorer 2 [1] for many years now.
|
| [1] https://www.zabkat.com/
| dark-star wrote:
| As a regular Total Commander user since version 3-point-something
| (and Norton Commander before that), I cannot imagine ever going
| back to Windows Explorer for file management. I'm infinitely
| faster than coworkers who work with Explorer, and it's awesome.
|
| Seeing an almost-perfect clone as fully open-source software
| makes me happy. However, building a fully-featured open-source
| clone is probably years in the future, even for the features I
| use most. One just has to read the release notes for Total
| Commander to see what kind of corner-cases and special cases
| Christian (Total Commander author) has had to take care of. Just
| being able to put copy jobs into the background, work some more,
| and then bring them back into foreground again I cannot even
| imagine on how tricky this was to code so that it works correctly
| (and all using Pascal, no less)
|
| I will definitely keep an eye out on this one, but I don't think
| I'll make the switch in the near future.
| majkinetor wrote:
| DC is very complite replacement of TC, I was using TC (in
| advanced way, I know most of its numerious features) for
| decades and switched to DC without missing anything.
| ttpphd wrote:
| Thank you. As a total commander user, I was hoping someone
| would do this comparison and share it. Appreciated!
| aidenn0 wrote:
| If I don't have TC shortcuts in my muscle memory, am I losing out
| on using Krusader on linux rather than Double Commander?
| unixhero wrote:
| Double Commander and Total Commander are amazing tools of the
| mind.
| Isognoviastoma wrote:
| Nope, depending on your workflow, you can miss features of
| Krusader like archive integration, browsing over ssh, lock-step
| navigation in panels, selection modes, builtin editor/viewer
| formats coverage and other tiny yet comfortable goodies.
|
| Double Commander is an acceptable substitute of Krusader on
| non-Unices.
| clint wrote:
| All of these commanders are a rip of the original Norton
| Commander by John Socha in 1986. John also created the first
| screen saver and coined the term. His company also created the
| Microsoft Plus! addon for Windows 95 and screensavers for Win98.
|
| Pretty cool dude!
| rasz wrote:
| Dont you mean "Norton Commander Copyright (C) 1986 by Peter
| Norton"? :-)
|
| Reminds me of https://wetmachine.com/my-thoughts-exactly/ghost-
| writer/
|
| >I was ego surfing today when I came upon this link to a book
| "Inside the Sun386i and Sun486i" by Peter Norton and, to my
| great astonishment, me.
|
| >And it turned out that I was going to have to write a 400 or
| so page book. For which I was going to be given, I think, a
| $3,000 advance against royalties. The book was going to say "By
| PETER NORTON" and there would be a tiny "with John Sundman" at
| the bottom. Norton was not required to do any writing or
| editing;
| jonathankoren wrote:
| 36 years later, and people are still cloning Norton Commander?
|
| I never understood the appeal of them, especially given a GUI.
| (Recall, NC was originally a DOS app.) I suspect OFMs are a class
| of software that's going to die out when the generation of users
| that grew up with them die off.
| majkinetor wrote:
| Double Commander is great and in my opinion better then then
| Total Commander - it has better UI, saner configuration and is
| cross platform and FOSS. DC is first thing I install on any
| Windows machine instead of using Explorer.
|
| If you want quick way to install it and/or TC on Windows, along
| with selection of plugins, use my chocolatey TCP [1] packages.
|
| You can use cinst doublecmd tcp cinst
| totalcommander tcp
|
| to install doublecmd or totalcommander with around 20 great
| plugins and keep them all up to date with single command (choco
| update), or you can cherry pick individual plugins. Since both
| file managers use the same plugin format, the package will work
| with whatever one you use.
|
| Both packages have parameter /DefaultFM which will make system
| open it everywhere where it would open Explorer instead.
|
| There are also dark and minimial themes I created you may want to
| check: tcp-unlit and dcp-unlit [2]
|
| Everything is on GitHub in case you want to improve [3]
|
| [1]: https://community.chocolatey.org/packages/tcp#dependencies
|
| [2]: https://community.chocolatey.org/packages/dcc-unlit
|
| [3]: https://github.com/majkinetor/au-packages/tree/master/tcp
| unixhero wrote:
| Double Commander is amazing! Is is a drop in replacement for
| Total Commander. It even supports Total Commander expansion
| modules, of which there are hundreds.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Abstract:
|
| Marta is the greatest file manager for MacOS, by light years.
|
| Longer version:
|
| Before switching away from Windows, I was a long-time Far Manager
| [1] user. It is a great, great program _far_ better than various
| graphical commanders. It had a set of killer features:
|
| 1. Quick directories, press ctrl-1 and you are there
|
| 2. No graphical cruft. All these tiny boxes and panels with
| buttons you see everywhere on the likes of Total commander,
| Double commander, etc, they are gone, none
|
| 3. It is text mode. Hard to spoil a properly done text mode with
| bad fonts, tiny fonts, etc - especially if you can set them up
| yourself
|
| 4. Folder operations. Open same folder in another panel, compare
| panels, selecting files, masks, regex, all done, all great
|
| 5. Great archive support. Open archive from folder, copy from
| archive, all done all great
|
| 6. Very, very capable build-in editor with code highlighting, and
| hex viewer/editor(!). I could edit savegames right from a file
| manager, imagine that?!
|
| I could go on, but _nothing_ I have ever tried on GNU /Linux and
| MacOS came even close to it. I even tried to use ports of Far
| [2], but it is... well, _far_ from smoothly supporting either
| platform.
|
| So I was really unhappy when using MacOS (there are few apps I
| hate as much as native Finder) until I've found Marta [3]
| recently. And Marta is truly great file manager for MacOS that
| even improves on Far in a lot of ways. Its author Yan Zhulanow is
| an extremely great developer who has put a lot of thought into
| the application, and it does everything that Far does (maybe sans
| a built-in editor), and it improves on it in many ways. Try it
| out.
|
| It is blazing fast, it is _very_ well thought through from top to
| bottom, and it is probably one of the few perfect apps that leave
| you stunned after discovering it. It does have a relatively high
| learning curve to learn how to configure it and to learn all the
| hotkeys, but the result is very much worth it.
|
| [1]: https://www.farmanager.com/
|
| [2]: https://github.com/elfmz/far2l
|
| [3]: https://marta.sh
| meebee wrote:
| It does feel like a native Mac app and is quick and responsive.
| Is there a way to modify the key hotkeys to be like Total
| Commander? At this point I don't want to have to learn another
| set of keystrokes. I briefly looked at it and hit space to
| select a few files, and it opened them, and then I hit Cmd+D to
| get a quick directory and instead duplicated the file. So it
| seems that a key mapping from us old commander users must have
| been done by someone.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| I think you can, it has a pretty powerful configuration
| editor. I wasn't specifically looking in TC-like config,
| because Far hotkeys are hard-wired in my brain and I felt
| that they are mostly the same in Marta.
| majkinetor wrote:
| You don't have to use GUI with both TC and DC. Its a matter of
| configuration.
|
| One important thing I do is set fuzzy filter on so that when I
| type in folder it selects file/folder I want quickly and ENTER
| will do the rest. Hotkeys are a thing too. I never use mouse
| with them.
| ggambetta wrote:
| I use emelfm2 on Linux. But really this all made me nostalgic for
| XTree [0]. What made it so damn good? Why don't we have a modern
| equivalent these days?
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XTree
| nope96 wrote:
| There is a fantastic windows clone of XTree that has been
| around forever... still updated
|
| https://www.ztree.com/html/ztreewin.htm
| mrsaint wrote:
| How I wish there was a native version of ZTree for Linux.
| [deleted]
| MrYellowP wrote:
| Double Commander,
|
| inspired by Midnight Commander, (1994)
|
| inspired by Total Commander, (1993)
|
| inspired by Norton Commander, (1986)
|
| inspired by ...
| blackhaz wrote:
| Commanders! The first thing I install on literally any computer I
| touch. It's like climbing on the top of the hill (or mountain!)
| and overlooking the dense foliage. I really don't establish a
| mental connection with the machine until I have a commander
| running. Doing any disk operations in the Explorer, whatever else
| drag-and-drop there is, or just plain shell, is just pathetically
| painful and slow.
|
| Also, shout out to DOS Navigator! I used Norton Commander until
| 386DX-40, but then switched to the Navigator. Still remember I
| saw it first time in a shop where I was buying pirated games. The
| dude in the shop with the long hair was copying files and it
| looked uber-cool for some reason. I had to ask what was the name
| of this wonderful utility. He silently showed me the About dialog
| without turning back. There was no way back to NC from that point
| on my high-tower Pentium-133.
| agentwiggles wrote:
| I guess stuff like Commander never quite got a hold on me
| because it feels easy to do everything at the shell. What kinds
| of benefits am I missing out on?
| orzig wrote:
| Seconded. I am feeling the enthusiasm of people on this
| thread and I am really curious - if this could really make me
| as happy as it makes them I'm totally game, but I just don't
| see where it would fit into my workflow. Can some people give
| more concrete examples of what they use it for?
| pilina wrote:
| I am not a dev. But I've built dependency on following
| workflow: Navigating to right file -> taking full path to
| clipboard (Ctrl + Shift + C) -> switching to work app, e.g.
| CAD (Alt + Tab) -> Open dialog (Ctrl + O) -> Paste full
| path (Ctrl+V) and hit Enter. That's the main reason for I
| can't use GNOME and that awful GTK file dialog. I can
| navigate really quickly in commanders, because I've used
| them since I've started using computer - so that makes this
| workflow legit for me.
| pantulis wrote:
| I used extensively Midnight commander on a SunOS
| workstation for quickly browsing source codebases that
| spanned thousands of files without launching XEmacs. But
| for me the killer feature was having special popup menus
| (configurable per directory!) that could launch scripts on
| top of the selected files was pretty powerful. For example
| in the pre-subversion days I could check-in a bunch of
| files that were changed into the repository using a
| proprietary tool from my employer with just a couple of
| keystrokes.
| dark-star wrote:
| You only really benefit when you use it a while and know all
| the key bindings by heart. Most of these seem pretty minor
| but when you get used to them you totally miss them when you
| don't have Total Commander available. And it's hard to
| explain to people, similar to explaining why one uses Dvorak
| layout or a Tiling WM to someone who has never thought about
| using those. Some examples:
|
| - selecting files to work with. add, remove to your selection
| by pattern or manually (e.g. all *.jpg files except the two
| largest) and work on those
|
| - move files to subdirectories without first creating a
| subdirectory (it creates it on-the-fly)
|
| - multi-rename tool. select some files, rename them (with
| auto-incrementing counters, regex, taking substrings of the
| original name, etc). This is the killer feature for me (e.g.
| rename files with timestamps like dd-mm-yy-something.jpg to
| yyyy-mm-dd (SOMETHING).jpg or things like that. Oh and you
| can use fields from metadata too (id3, exif, ...)
|
| - very fast integrated text/hex viewer with selectable
| codepages, ansi/ascii switch, and support for images and
| other multimedia files
|
| - incremental search in file lists
|
| - directory sync. compare and sync different directories by
| copying files one way or both ways
|
| - everything done via keyboard, no need to move the hands to
| the mouse and back for anything
|
| - integrated command line, so you can still type something
| like "cd \\\server.domain.local\share$" and instantly have
| that directory in the tab (you cannot "cd" to an UNC path in
| cmd.exe)
|
| - opening and working with tar, zip, rar files as if they
| were regular files. and with plugins you can even open disk
| images as if they were files
|
| - another nice feature I totally like but which is hard to
| explain: you copy files simply by pressing f5 and enter. but
| when you press f5 a second/third time before pressing enter,
| the textbox selection (for the destination filename/path)
| switches through the full path, the filename+extension and
| the filename. So you can easily copy a file and change
| (overwrite) the filename in the destination just by pressing
| f5, f5, newnamehere, enter. It keeps the extension and the
| path you have open in the second window. True, you can do
| this with tab completion on the command line quite easily
| too, but you still have to press tab multiple times
| (depending on the uniqueness of the path maybe a lot more
| often), and you still have to type the extension by hand
|
| - did I mention plugins? viewer-plugins (I have one that
| interprets ANSI sequences, for example, for vieweing those
| cool 90s stype BBS ads), packer plugins (I wrote a lot of
| these to unpack/access data files from old games), etc.
|
| - for retro enthusiasts: PORT connection (through a parallel
| LapLink cable or USB data transfer cable) to another PC
| running Total Commander. No network necessary.
|
| - full text search (ascii, hex, unicode) through all files
| (or only selected files/directories), including in archive
| files, with multiple patterns and excludes: alt-f7, "
| _.c;_.h|~ _._ ",alt-t, "printf" -> search for "printf" in all
| .c and .h files except those that start with a tilde. After
| the search you can send the result list to the left/right
| panel and work with it as if it were a regular directory.
| i.e. select all files that match "data _._ " and copy them to
| a different directory (even though the source files are
| scattered throughout an entire directory tree). Of course you
| can also seach by metadata (only files/directories/readonly
| files, timestamps, limited directory depth, file size
| larger/smaller than X, and with the right plugins by metadata
| like id3/exif too ...)
|
| Yes, for all these things there are either separate tools
| that do the same (maybe even better): multi-rename tools
| exist, opening matroshka-archives (zip in zip in tar in gz)
| can be done with 7zip, and there are plenty of image viewers
| out there that offer more features than the integrated
| viewer. RSync can do synchronization a bit better. but here
| you have it all in one place
| meebee wrote:
| Well said and that about covers it for me. Once you learn
| the commands, there is very little thinking needed to
| traverse the file structure, picking/moving/modifying
| files, synching and comparing, all at blazing speed. It is
| the first app I add to any OS I'm working with.
| pantulis wrote:
| DOS Navigator was the definitive dual pane file manager for
| MSDOS, no doubt!
| Aspos wrote:
| FAR works on Linux and MacOS as well
| https://github.com/elfmz/far2l
| cestith wrote:
| It seems a bit odd to me to credit Total Commander but not a
| single one of Midnight Commander, Windows Commander, EF
| Commander, WinNC, PC Commander, SpeedCommander, XCommander,
| XTree, YTree, ZTree, or the venerable Norton Commander.
|
| It even still uses the same hotkeys as Norton Commander. Still,
| it supports Total Commander's plugins in case someone is using
| those, it's LGPL, it looks like a decent example of a useable
| Free Pascal application to dive into contributing against, it's
| cross-platform (Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, macOS), and it builds
| against gtk2, qt4, or qt5. Overall it looks like a nice project.
| It could probably use a commit in the About page for a first
| contribution to the project noting a little more history of its
| lineage.
| notyourday wrote:
| This is missing vc - Volkov Commander - written in _assembly_.
| It was tiny, had amazingly complete functionality and was
| blazingly fast.
| warpech wrote:
| I loved VC. Its tiny size (less than 100k) made it fit on any
| floppy disk, even when it was already almost full. It
| inspired me by showing how powerful our computers are. It was
| an order of magnitude smaller than NC, if I remember
| correctly.
|
| Here's some short story about VC: https://web.archive.org/web
| /20201027035410/http://www.softpa...
| ihateolives wrote:
| There were more, eg DOS navigator, Far manager. The latter is
| still in development.
| lucas_membrane wrote:
| Gnome commander is OK for me; where does it fit on the family
| tree? 'tis easier for me to let my eyeballs do the walking than
| to figure out and type a regex that is going to find just what
| I want.
| int_19h wrote:
| Then there's Far Manager, with is _the_ thing if what you want
| is the classic blue TUI on Windows:
|
| https://farmanager.com/index.php?l=en
| nathell wrote:
| Windows Commander was the former name of Total Commander. It
| changed the name in 2002 after Christian Ghisler received a
| cease-and-desist letter about trademark usage from Microsoft.
| cestith wrote:
| Microsoft has been known to be perhaps overzealous in their
| trademark protection at times, but I think that's a valid
| complaint. It fills the same niche as Windows Explorer so
| confusion was quite possible. I always had Total Commander on
| my BartPE images back in the day.
| badsectoracula wrote:
| Makes sense since Double Commander is literally a Total
| Commander clone, way more than Total Commander was a Norton
| Commander(, etc) clone :-P.
| themadturk wrote:
| FreeCommander is my go-to for Windows. Though I'm a Mac user at
| home, I'm stuck on Windows at work and paid for the 64-bit
| version of FreeCommander. File Manager seems to be some alien
| thing, and I still work with _lots_ of files at work.
| tambourine_man wrote:
| I looked for a Mac binary to download but there is none. You
| probably have to build it from source.
| [deleted]
| pwinnski wrote:
| Or `brew install double-commander` which grabs a dmg from
| SourceForge.
|
| You'll have to right-click and Open it in the Finder's
| Applications folder to get past the fact that it's unsigned,
| but it seems to work an M1 running MacOS 12.4 (Monterey)
| meebee wrote:
| I use DC on Mac and TC on Win. One of the problems with Mac
| DC is that the key reassignment don't use the standard Mac
| Control, Option, Command keys. They do map to the Win
| equivalents of Ctrl, Alt, Win keys but not always. And
| trying to override the Mac's almost hard key assignment of
| the F1-F12 keys is problematic.
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