Directory Opus is a complete replacement for Explorer
gpsoft.com.au
gpsoft.com.au
I am happy to see that the idea is still alive. Although, I don't use Windows anymore.
Finally I found DOPUS and it was a godsend. Tabs of all my common folders, batch rename, dual windows, etc. My job became much easier and I have free time to learn other aspects of the company.
DOPUS 60 day test drive was about to expire, and I had my 6 month review with my boss (the owner) and HR. They ask if there is anything that would make my job easier: DOPUS and a 2nd monitor.
I received a big lecture on downloading software (I get it), $2 raise, 2nd monitor, but no DOPUS. I was heartbroken. I loved it so much that I would have paid for it with my own money for the company's benefit. It was that good.
Another 6 months and I was promoted out of data management. DOPUS would have still been useful, but not to the same extent as that entry level position.
Mostly I followed this guide [0] to install a few customizations, the most important part of which I paid the $5 for [1] to bring back the ol' reliable "hit the windows key and type the first couple letters of a destination, hit enter" without waiting for a web search to find Bing results for "downloads"
To complete the throwback for myself, I also found an install for Sony SonicStage 4.3 circa 2008 and am very pleased to have all the old library features (Artist Link graph navigation, easy playlists and tagging) [2]
I'm going to try Directory Opus, I have to rename a bunch of mp3 files since SonicStage predates certain unicode characters...
[0] https://github.com/malvinas2/ClassicThemeForWindows10
[1] https://www.startisback.com/
[2] https://archive.org/details/SonicStage4.3USWindows10Unsigned
so anyway I appreciate what startisback has done, I think the hierarchical menu of old is a better design than the fuzzy matching that comes standard today
All in one super fast, integrated product that is constantly updated and has been rock solid for, literally, decades.
Windows is doing this sort of thing in a number of places for me. It's like someone decided "async is cool!" and no one told them that interrupting the user is bad.
A ton of application are doing that now. I think it has become the prevalent paradigm in many places, as a bad application of optimistic event handling.
I imagine the devs thinking "It will surely load fast enough so it's not an issue", or "we can't block user interaction until everything's loaded, when the files they need might stay displayed at the same place the whole time" etc.
It's particularly bad with task managers loading task lists asynchronously, when some of the first items might only be loaded last, and the list continuously moves top and down while it's loading.
Here is one source about how to disable it: https://www.howtogeek.com/403162/how-to-disable-the-windows-... (I searched for "windows startup delay").
Both on linux and windows, I dream of an "explorer nirvana", where the following is solved to perfection: -relevant context-menus for all file-types. -"perfect" 'application-versus-documents-assocatation', so the system knows which applications MAY support a given filetype, and the user dynamically can enable/disable a file association (I don't want the user to delete any file association, only to DISABLE it). - perfectly registered file-viewers, so the details/preview pane can always easily preview any file. Windows Explorer, in my mind, scores high on this, mostly based on efforts back before 2005; hopefully they won't squander it all. If I was a linux distro, my attack vector would be an awesome 'file explorer/previewer'.
My pet peeve in windows explorer, is that file byte size isn't offered as one of the configurable columns. My pet enthusiasm on explorer is, that for many years this as been available as a third-party extension, which highlights what a good design windows explorer has.
Since the end of windows 7/arrival of windows 8, I regard microsoft as incapable of ever building something as great as windows explorer, sadly. The cathedral OS with a consistent UI look & feel (including navigation shortcuts and behaviour), seems to be an art lost with the redmond roman empire of the nineties, and now we must live in perpetual Electron Hell, where UI's are built to be operated with a nose.
It sorely lacks a tabbed interface. I understand they don't want to confuse their users with folder tabs, but there should be an option to enable them for advanced users. Most file managers have had them for many years.
Some additional features would be useful.
e.g. those of attribute changer https://www.petges.lu/ modifies metadata between source and destination without changing the underlying identical files.
e.g. personally find winmerge and winscp a simpler solution to some aspects of comparison and synchronisation (but need setup)
Overall I do use Opus regularly but largely to just get a count of the contents of a directory (avoiding a manual file propperties right click on the folder.)
I appreciate the software development costs, but £25 for a single node locked license is steep. I'd like to see that extended to at least a couple of PCs + a laptop as many advanced users (who can regex :) ) are likely to have at least a couple of PCs round the house in these work from home days.
Overall 3.5 out of five - undeniably powerful but interface is too fussy
Total Commander is 50% more expensive than that. I was going to say that it's worse value because of it, then I realised that not only is it a multi-computer license for the registered user, but that also the past 15-20 years of updates would have been free if I bought it.
That's actually decent. I'm part of the Linux ecosystem for now (so I can't run it other than Wine), but if I was on Windows, I'd likely invest in a license. Considering that it's still being updated for new machines after so long, and retains support all the way back to Windows 95, it's good value for money.
Ignoring the cost, Directory Opus is one of the few pieces of software that I have not encountered licensing issues with. Need to reinstall Windows, the certificate is applied without a fuss. Need to transfer the license to a new computer, the certificate is applied without a fuss. Using an old version, the certificate is applied without a fuss and disabling the update manager means it won't pester you to upgrade. The only time I was grumpy with their support policies was when I had to upgrade to update SSH support.
Several of the features regarding merging, synchronisation, metadata handling are available now (not in the 'DOpus 12 light' release from 2017 I was using).
I will gladly pay my money for the pro version and look forward to using the latest version with my own cat videos.
(Still consider the features as too configurable and not easily 'discoverable' particularly for 'normal' rather than 'tech' users)
I also recognise how amazingly talented the small DOpus12 team are. They've implemented something that Microsoft should have done....
http://www.softpanorama.org/OFM/index.shtml http://www.softpanorama.org/OFM/Paradigm/index.shtml
As a side note, 7-zip doubles as two panes file manager, not "orthodox" but still good enough for normal tasks.
FAR was much later, and quite much more that either.
Then there's Total Commander ...
does Directory Opus support it? or has an acceptable workaround for it?
It is definitely worth watching though just to see how simple it is to customize your installation and how flexible it is for file management operations.
I have used various file managers from XTree to Total Commander. Directory Opus looks to be worth trying and I may give it a go after I complete my new workstation configuration over the holidays.
Just as a standalone application, or to replace explorer.
>> Click thumbnails to embiggen
I'm really low on time for maintaining gentoo now, which is why it no longer even has a web site, which is annoying and a bit sad.
I haven't used DOpus since my Amiga days back in the 80s and 90s, but obviously it was a big inspiration for gentoo. Probably DOpus has evolved a great deal since I used it; I've never touched it on Windows.
Just for fun/inspiration/reference, I would appreciate hearing what you find most lacking in gentoo, if you have experience using it. When it was first released, around 2000, I feel it was a pretty decent file manager for Linux and also some BSD systems, and it did so much* to help me improve my C and portability skills.
[*] I have actual e-mail from Daniel Robbins, the founder of Gentoo Linux, about the name clash. The e-mail is dated 2000-01-22, so it's almost 22 years since the question was semi-relevant. :) Now off to comb my beard and chase people off the lawn.
Just to add some context, as far as I remember, gentoo was pretty similar to how DOpus worked on the Amiga until version 5, when it went from being a classic "one window, two pane, rows of buttons" thing, to arbitrary numbers of independent windows. DOpus 5 was really neat and powerful but also quite a different experience, more like its own desktop environment really. I hope I still have the ring bound manual somewhere...
Given a month of time, I don't think I could express the vast differences between Directory Opus 12 and Gentoo or many other file explorers that are available. Even PathFinder on macOS is a pale shadow of what Directory Opus achieves, and I happen to love PathFinder.
From file type support, to file renaming, image sizing, meta data options, scripting, macro recording, tabbed directories, filtering, finding in files, finding files in diretories, directory navigation, bookmarking, stability, speed, virtual directories, directory browsing, file system search, ftp, sftp, one and two way syncing, filename copying (e.g. copy filenames, copy full pathnames, copy short names, copy short pathnames, copy URLs, copy MD5 checksums, copy SHA-1 checksums, copy full pathnames with double backslashes, copy folder path, copy complete folder listing), file copying & file moving, queued file copying, unattended file copying, speed of file copying, prioritized file copying, pausable file copying, file deduping, renaming of dupes, unzipping and zipping in different archive formats, encoding files and decoding files. And I've only scratched the surface. And then just general spit and polish. And compatibility with all the different versions of Windows. And everything on a hotkey. And everything with configurable & saveable preferences.
I know that "but <favourite file explorer> also does that!" is a common refrain, but on Directory Opus, whatever feature you are comparing against, Directory Opus basically took the amplifier knob, turned it up to 11, then snapped it off to make sure you couldn't fuck with it. I know that "there is a utility in Linux that does that" or "well, that's easy, you just have to open a terminal and..." but again, it's built-in to Directory Opus. It just works.
I know I am singing high praises of this software, but it is like comparing Photoshop and GIMP, they both push pixels, but we know deep down, there really is no competition.
I really wish GPSoft would consider a Linux port, but they have emphatically stated that they have no intention of doing so, for business reasons, and I can kind of see their point.
There's nothing bad about Gentoo, but it isn't Directory Opus.
A clone of an earlier version of DOpus, Worker, exists as well: http://www.boomerangsworld.de/cms/worker/index.html
I used this for a while before settling with Krusader, but I was not dissatisfied.
Completely indispensable on a Windows machine.
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