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Comment by martin1975 | Hacker News Reader

martin1975

My fav utility was the File Explorer predecessor, Norton Commander. Hopefully someone else remembers these great tools. :)

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The only piece of software from DOS/Windows I miss on Linux is an analog to Far Manager - THE descendant of Norton Commander app. No other 2 panel file managers come close, and mc just doesn't cut it. All those hotkeys are ingrained in my memory despite not using the application for more than 15 years.

I've been using Far Manager since forever, but also "mc" on linux/osx machines (as you've said, it's not very useable on Windows itself, tried the cygwin version, and meh).

Windows Commander (now Total Commander) was/is still good. It was the first piece of shareware I registered, for Windows 3.1. It's still in development today, with an Android version!

Total commander is a great successor I think. Once you get used to 2-pane logic, the efficiency boost with anything file-related is really huge. It is fast and has so many features - tabbed panes, quick recursive file content search, very nice comparison of 2 files, folders synchronization, built-in navigation in archives (I often edit files directly in packages, it recompresses them automatically) and archives within archives, great network/FTP browser and many more... it really packs few tens of great tools into one neat package.

One of many detractors from Linux in the past from me - whenever I tried any equivalent there, it was very slow, featureless, crashing etc. I hope these days the situation is better.

Whenever I look at any other colleague, who use that primitive File explorer or equivalent, how clunky and slow work it is, its sad that people don't do this one-time effort to transition to the tool which is so vastly better.

FYI: Total Commander runs on Linux with Wine fairly well. One notable problem with it (and Wine in general) is that it is not HiDPI-aware, so you get a miniature UI :(

Having said that, I think Krusader comes pretty close with the right settings / keyboard shortcuts.

It has one crucial downside: it does not run in the console. Ability to see image previews right in the app is NOTHING compared to capability run the app remotely.

It's what kills the most new attempts at filemanagers, like fman - for some silly reason they try to do it with GUI.

Well

- Midnight Commander

- Total Commander

And

- Double Commander

Are still employing those hotkeys.

Total commander does not work in console, that immediately rules it out.

Mc is okay-ish, but it lacks the excellent plugins Far had, and a multitude of small life improvements, like directory hotkeys, file selection options, great built-in text/hex file viewer (and previewer!). Mc is what I use all these years after leaving windows, and it's not even close to Far in user experience, unfortunately.

Most of the so-called OFMs (orthodox file managers) do:

http://www.softpanorama.org/OFM/

DN (Dos Navigator) is not at all bad on Windows, cannot say on Linux, but it is worth a try.

Far is what i have replaced DN with. It's not even close, Far had great set of plugins and life improvements

Sure, I agree that FAR is on another planet, but I was referring to possible use under Linux, as said DN has a Linux version (which I never tested):

http://ndn.muxe.com/

Does anyone remember the Norton Desktop shell for Windows 3.1? It turned 3.1 into something beating the Mac in terms of a desktop experience. Absolutely amazing levels of customization, a full shell scripting language with GUI components reminiscent of Tk/Wish, I could go on.

That desktop plus the whole set of Windows 3.1 programs were a killer combo.

Sure I remember it, it also came with a sort of scripting (very much batch-like) language.

I remember writing a pseudo-GUI for PKzip in it at the time (WinZip was more or less the only graphical zip tool and it costed too much).

Shame that so many interesting GUIs like this simply fell away, and meanwhile my Linux GNOME desktop still doesn't feel as obvious and powerful as that machine did back in 1994.

Well, there was also the MC Shell, you can get a copy from here (in case you get an attack of nostalgia and have a VM or a spare old-old machine available):

http://reboot.pro/topic/752-mcshell-a-shell-look-a-like-to-m...

Don’t remember it, but sounds neat.

http://toastytech.com/guis/ndw.html has some screenshots.

Xtree was better

Norton Utilities, XTree Pro Gold, and Borland Sidekick were the tits on MS-DOS.

I still use a Xtree clone and it is nice. https://www.han.de/~werner/ytree.html

With at least one other, I far preferred PC Tools. Until Symantec bought and canned them.

PC Tools had a great tape backup program too - that was the real casualty of Symantec buying them.

At least I'm still not bitter :p

nc was awesome — it still lives on in a way, as inspiration for Midnight Commander[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight_Commander

Yes, Norton Commander was my go-to utility during the DOS era.

For a short time, my nickname (not just internet pseudonym, but real-life monicker) was "ndos" as someone in my circle of nerdy friends liked to call me that (I actually used 4dos, not its licensed variant, but let's not be too pedantic).

And yes, while it wasn't as great as the DOpus my Amiga friends always showed me, it was one of the great DOS apps.

I was more of a PC Shell (from PC Tools) person.

Even today, on every OS, I still manage files using a two-pane window and the keyboard unless I'm using a terminal.

Yes.

And I still find weird that Midnight Commander has no quick view functionality.

What's a quick view? I just press F3. It's quick enough for me.

It means you have the file list on one panel and the contents on the other panel.

So you scroll over the list and the contents update with each file.

SMH

yum -y install mc

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