I’ve used it for a long time, probably more than a decade (switched to Macs in 2010). Even in the 00s it had so many features. I think the first time I’ve encountered regular expressions was in a mass rename tool in Total Commander.
It's extremely popular in Hungary, almost everyone has it installed. I've been using in for at least 20 years. When I moved to the UK 10 years ago I was quite surprised that nobody knew it.
Fascinating. I used it in the '00s and would never have thought to try it again. Why don't out think it's so popular in Hungary? And Cuba, Czechia, Slovakia...? UTF-8 capabilities?
I think in Cuba, Belarus, Uzbekistan... "total commander" has a different meaning :D
I don't think it's UTF-8 as Windows has been able to handle non-English alphabet letters for ages. I don't not know whether it has any specific, location related reason. I can work a lot faster with it than with File Explorer.
For all the MacOS dual pane file-manager fans: I tried them all and only recently discovered Marta (https://marta.sh/) which is now my favourite file manager!
Indeed, its ability to do simple navigation with single alpha homerow keys is alone almost worth all the missing functionality (and then there are also programmable extensions)
Unfortunately its pace of development is very slow :(
What about Nimble Commander (https://magnumbytes.com)? I’ve been using it for years and it’s great. Did you try it and if so, how does it compare to Marta?
Yes, Nimble Commander is wonderful. The developer took a lot of care and created a powerful and very fast tool. As a long time user of Total Commander on Windows I'd be crying sad tears if I had to limit myself to the basics that Finder provides on macOS.
Double Commander is the closest. Basically a clone of TC. Not as polished, still good. Beware, there multiple different builds for mac, some are good, some are bad
There are couple which will have two panels by default, but in my opinion, ForkLift is very native macOS commander-like app -- https://binarynights.com
I tried many commander-style file managers on many OSes. Some of them deliberately imitating Total Commander. But none of them really feels like the original. Some even look better and can be more powerful in some aspects yet I don't really feel that comfortable using them. Many are tolerable though.
In my oppinion Total Commander is the number-one best and most useful computer program ever made and the best UX. And yes, despite spending years using Norton Commander when I was a child, I always liked Total Commander (Windows Commander back in the days) better than the Far Manager - another alternative which imitated Norton Commander more closely and is considered more powerful by some people.
I use it a lot when I have to operate on files in a terminal but it feels limited, inflexible and stagnant. Lack of background operations support is particulrly annoying. In my oppinion they should have made it more customizable and extensible, e.g. through a Python or a Lisp plug-in API or something like that. I can even imagine it being more powerful than Total Commander is whle keeping similarly user-friendly. One cool thing about a GUI file manager are file type icons which indicate a file type concisely without the ugliness and ADHD-nightmare of painting each file name in a different colour (the way terminal-based file managers do) but this can probably be solved using Unicode emojis modern terminals mostly support.
I tried Total Commander while I was still using Windows but in the end settled on Servant Salamander (later renamed to Altap Salamander). Somehow I liked it better haptically than Total Commander at the time. Sadly development of it stopped a few years ago and it is now free for everybody. Download it here: https://www.altap.cz/
Does not support Unicode in filenames. They had plans for it like 10 years ago but they never actually got around to do it. I ditched Salamander for Freecommander years ago primarily for this reason. Freecommander is in active development as well. https://freecommander.com/en/summary/
I use this on Windows because of the dual pane layout which allows me to easily move/copy files around, but also do other nice stuff like file diffs, though probably other apps out there can also do these things. It's also preety snappy when dealing with zip archives unlike Windows file explorer.
To be noted this app is also available on Android, comes in very handy and it also has plugins for network storage shares such as SMB. I got bitten in the past by other file managers on Android that turned into adware infested cesspools.
Very useful, I bought it years ago and used it on Windows. I've been using only Linux for about 10 years now, but I'd like to use Total Commander on Linux.
Thanks for the suggestion, but I am on Linux Mint with Cinnamon (and evaluating to move to Debian testing with Gnome or XFCE when the Wayland support will be available). Installing Krusader would fill my GTK based system with KDE dependencies ... I'm not sure it is a good idea. It looks very well done in any case !
FWIW, the KDE support apps are excellent and disk space is cheap; although I am a KDE user whenever I am on a non-KDE system I invariably end up installing a bunch of them shortly. The dependencies just sit on your disk not doing anything when they're not used, it's not worth having apprehension over installing them unless you are extremely short on disk space or something.
I switched to Ubuntu recently and have tried to find an alternative to Konsole ever since (I heavily used the unlimited scrollback together with the search function, which is a feature most terminal emulators lack), and finally settled on WezTerm, which is pretty good, but still has some rough edges. Maybe I should just install Konsole?
MC has the bonus of retaining the original Norton Commander vibe for console fans, but I personally prefer Double Commander, which is a GUI app and feels more familiar because I went the Norton Commander (DOS) -> Total Commander (Windows) -> Double Commander (Linux) route. BTW, there was a Norton Commander for Windows too (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norton_Commander#Norton_Comman...), but it never gained much traction...
What I always miss with these alternatives compared to TC is that they don't work like a terminal when typing. For instance in TC when I type 'cd ..' it navigates one directory up in the focused panel. While in Double Commander it starts to search for 'cd ..'. I don't want to click on the bottom text bar each time I want to execute a command. Maybe this can be configured but I cannot find the right setting.
Tried Double Commander several times, GTK and QT versions, and while it is almost exact copy of TC, it seemed somehow "off", and I never could use it properly.
It's been my default file manager since the Amiga days of the early 90s. I do love TC and have been using it at work a lot on and off but DOpus is forever.
I've always liked the Windows Explorer Treeview+Listview style file managers (XYplorer is vey good), but for heavy workloads, nothing beats Total Commander!
Imho tree-view or 'single pane' style file managers are okay if you're just browsing. Open a file here or there, move something to elsewhere in the directory tree, etc.
For more serious work I always gravitate towards 2-pane file managers like TC (#1 favourite on Windows, which for me is back in the stone age).
Fro me, it's things like comparing directories, filename search-and-replace/multi-rename, copying/syncing (locally or over ftp) with editable queues, etc.
Shameless self promotion of my own AI experiments.
Around 110000 files checked out related to the OEIS database. The project is open source here:
https://loda-lang.org/
I'm experimenting training a vision transformer with ARC tasks. There are 800 tasks, and each task augmented yields around 10000 files. However my ViT code cannot solve any ARC tasks, but my non-ViT code solves 6 ARC tasks.
https://lab42.global/arcathon/leaderboard/
As many here I'm in love with Total Commander for a long time and it was my first purchase.
I find equally amazing that it's a one man shop. Christian Ghisler created, maintains and supports this application for 30 years (initial release: 29th Sep 1993).
I have boundless admiration for this kind of dedication.
I've done things that people thought were magic. It was TC.
There are about twenty similar programs, all descended from the Norton Commander. Any one of them is enormously better than the file managers that come with most OSs, especially windows. Ive read estimates that say you're about four times as productive if you use on, and I think that may be very conservative. There are a lot of things you can't do without one.
A friend worked at a place where management disabled the search function in windows, probably because people were getting stuff done. I set him up with TC, which has its own search.
The IT lead at one place I worked said, "I don't like that program. it makes things easier than they should be."
TC is the best of its kind. It's so good I paid for it. (I've had twenty years of free upgrades.)
I remember once I needed to rename a bunch of files to a template similar to NewName_001, upwards of 100. TC lets you just set a name pattern and follows it, which meant I did it in about 10 seconds. My colleague took 10 minutes and a lot of groaning about "why isn't there a better way?".
(This is just to help macOS Finder users, not to say, "Well, Finder can do it too!!)
You can select multiple files in Finder > Right-click on one of them > Rename. That'll bring up a modal with some bulk-rename options, including a name pattern. It's not intuitive, but was really cool when I found it for the first time!
That's awesome! I use a Mac-based software similar to TC (after years of using TC on Windows), and always use it for bulk renaming. I had no idea I could do the same with Finder, I'll definitely take advantage of that in the future!
I've been looking for a Linux alternative ever since I mostly switched away from Windows a few years ago, and so far this one is the best FOSS alternative I found: https://doublecmd.sourceforge.io/ - it's even written in Pascal, same as TC.
MC is great for the terminal, but I'm more of a GUI guy - Total Commander has introduced some improvements over the original Norton Commander (e.g. showing file icons, right-click context menus etc.) which I don't want to miss anymore...
I've used norton since 1993 IIRC, the 2-pane model is properly baked in my mind. Now with tabs, it is magical. At least to literally all colleagues I've shown it. Lightweight, performant, stable.
Sftp client, great recursive file content search including archives, file comparison, editing files directly in archives, plugins etc.
The thing is, everybody is wow at efficiency boost but almost nobody picks it up afterwards, they go back to slow basic clunky multiple windows. When I see how slow they are (easily 10-20x, more complex stuff they have to use other programs ot cant do at all), even my otherwise calm manners become... less calm.
I've tried gui variants on linux when I was toying with ubuntu few years ago, unstable, slow, basic. I hope its better now.
>Any one of them is enormously better than the file managers that come with most OSs, especially windows.
I duuno mate, I find the MacOS but especially the default Gnome file manager to be much more limited than the latest Windows Explorer in functionality. Gnome Files is a joke really, feels more like something on a mobile device.
The thing is, file managers that come with mainstream OSs are not designed to appease power users, as they will install their own personal favorite one anyway, but to make life easy for the average joe who doesn't know much about computers, files, extensions, etc. That's why they're so simplistic out of the box.
Something like TC, would be really confusing for the user who just wants to view the best photos in the download folder and drag and drop them to the Gmail in Chrome.
Trying to appease power users is an exercise in futility anyway, no matter what you do, someone will cry that his favorite and most used feature is still missing, so most SW companies don't even bother anymore with the tiny power-user market share if they also aren't paying customers. TC is one of the few exceptions that survived by including everything and the kitchen sink.
HN users should learn to detach themselves form the power-user mentality and empathize with the average joe who isn't tech savvy and has no interest in becoming tech savvy as they have other hobbies than learning how their computer works under the hood and becoming 40% more efficient with their file-management-fu.
"...disabled the search function in windows ... Why are they trying to make things difficult for people?"
If you do embedded system development it is best to turn Windows Search off.
Windows Search will write index files to devices that are not expecting to have such files written to them, which often bricks the devices. Old Freescale/NXP boards are particularly prone to this, until their bootloaders are updated, which can only be done on a Windows-7 machine.
Oddly if you do turn Windows Search off via registry key, then the Microsoft Store stops working correctly. I've never found that behavior documented anywhere.
107 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 184 ms ] threadhttps://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=now%201-d&q=%2...
I'm wondering it if is similar to Emacs Dired
I am sure there are other programs, like Double Commander or maybe Salamander Commander if it still exists, but this is what I settled on.
My most used features are:
Archives:
* Comparison of files in Zip file/directories, just go to the zip file and do synchronize directory to see differences
* Edit file and save it to zip after modification - no need to copy to temp location, it does it for you
* Pack/unpack are common
Lister
* Easy switch from hexa to text, fast, lightweight.
* Checksums - create and verify
I don't think it's UTF-8 as Windows has been able to handle non-English alphabet letters for ages. I don't not know whether it has any specific, location related reason. I can work a lot faster with it than with File Explorer.
It's like the Bud Spencer and Terence Hill movies. They are extremely popular here, in Germany, Austria, Italy but the rest of the world have not even heard about them. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=%2Fm%2F0...
We even have a statue of him at a frequented area. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bud_Spencer
Unfortunately its pace of development is very slow :(
Tweaked a few of the options for fonts and opening terminals and things and it's great (and fast as well).
The filter files, just by typing in a few characters. Nice.
Unlike other dual tab file managers, it use the spacebar for quicklook which I find more handy. In order to select files, use shift arrowup/arrowdown.
https://www.ghisler.com/wcmd16.htm
Given that win 3.11 doesn’t change, you can expect the old version to keep running too
P.S. i don't remember which one is better
https://sourceforge.net/projects/doublecmd/files/macOS/
https://doublecmd.sourceforge.io/site/eng/snapshots.php
P.P.S. Screenshots
https://r2.pocketmoon.me/upload/2023-09-01_2023-09-01---11.2...
https://r2.pocketmoon.me/upload/2023-09-01_2023-09-01---11.2...
https://r2.pocketmoon.me/upload/2023-09-01_2023-09-01---11.2...
https://r2.pocketmoon.me/upload/2023-09-01_2023-09-01---11.2...
Available on the Mac App Store - recommend getting the pro version if you need the features. Actively developed.
In my oppinion Total Commander is the number-one best and most useful computer program ever made and the best UX. And yes, despite spending years using Norton Commander when I was a child, I always liked Total Commander (Windows Commander back in the days) better than the Far Manager - another alternative which imitated Norton Commander more closely and is considered more powerful by some people.
Nowadays I use Krusader and Linux.
Does not support Unicode in filenames. They had plans for it like 10 years ago but they never actually got around to do it. I ditched Salamander for Freecommander years ago primarily for this reason. Freecommander is in active development as well. https://freecommander.com/en/summary/
To be noted this app is also available on Android, comes in very handy and it also has plugins for network storage shares such as SMB. I got bitten in the past by other file managers on Android that turned into adware infested cesspools.
Double Commander is open source, cross-platform and written with Lazarus / FPC : https://doublecmd.sourceforge.io/
But ... I am not able not to use Midnight Commander ...
You do yourself a disservice by avoiding them.
I've tried several TC GUI clones for Linux and Mac and every single one i've tried missed the terminal function, so I still use MC.
If anyone can point me to a GUI one that works like mc...
For more serious work I always gravitate towards 2-pane file managers like TC (#1 favourite on Windows, which for me is back in the stone age).
Around 110000 files checked out related to the OEIS database. The project is open source here: https://loda-lang.org/
I'm experimenting training a vision transformer with ARC tasks. There are 800 tasks, and each task augmented yields around 10000 files. However my ViT code cannot solve any ARC tasks, but my non-ViT code solves 6 ARC tasks. https://lab42.global/arcathon/leaderboard/
Plus... 37 euros????
0: https://www.gpsoft.com.au/
I find equally amazing that it's a one man shop. Christian Ghisler created, maintains and supports this application for 30 years (initial release: 29th Sep 1993).
I have boundless admiration for this kind of dedication.
https://www.ghisler.com/history1100.txt
Even after 30 years there are still things to fix pretty much every day. Maintenance is really endless task
Also, recently learned that there's mc on scoop: https://scoop.sh/#/apps?q=mc
You can select multiple files in Finder > Right-click on one of them > Rename. That'll bring up a modal with some bulk-rename options, including a name pattern. It's not intuitive, but was really cool when I found it for the first time!
https://github.com/MidnightCommander/mc.git
Sftp client, great recursive file content search including archives, file comparison, editing files directly in archives, plugins etc.
The thing is, everybody is wow at efficiency boost but almost nobody picks it up afterwards, they go back to slow basic clunky multiple windows. When I see how slow they are (easily 10-20x, more complex stuff they have to use other programs ot cant do at all), even my otherwise calm manners become... less calm.
I've tried gui variants on linux when I was toying with ubuntu few years ago, unstable, slow, basic. I hope its better now.
I duuno mate, I find the MacOS but especially the default Gnome file manager to be much more limited than the latest Windows Explorer in functionality. Gnome Files is a joke really, feels more like something on a mobile device.
The thing is, file managers that come with mainstream OSs are not designed to appease power users, as they will install their own personal favorite one anyway, but to make life easy for the average joe who doesn't know much about computers, files, extensions, etc. That's why they're so simplistic out of the box.
Something like TC, would be really confusing for the user who just wants to view the best photos in the download folder and drag and drop them to the Gmail in Chrome.
Trying to appease power users is an exercise in futility anyway, no matter what you do, someone will cry that his favorite and most used feature is still missing, so most SW companies don't even bother anymore with the tiny power-user market share if they also aren't paying customers. TC is one of the few exceptions that survived by including everything and the kitchen sink.
HN users should learn to detach themselves form the power-user mentality and empathize with the average joe who isn't tech savvy and has no interest in becoming tech savvy as they have other hobbies than learning how their computer works under the hood and becoming 40% more efficient with their file-management-fu.
> I don't like that program. it makes things easier than they should be.
Why are they trying to make things difficult for people?
If you do embedded system development it is best to turn Windows Search off.
Windows Search will write index files to devices that are not expecting to have such files written to them, which often bricks the devices. Old Freescale/NXP boards are particularly prone to this, until their bootloaders are updated, which can only be done on a Windows-7 machine.
Oddly if you do turn Windows Search off via registry key, then the Microsoft Store stops working correctly. I've never found that behavior documented anywhere.
The preview panel for example. There was a Windows version of Norton Commander and it used all available registered Windows preview handlers.
I am using Double Commander instead. And I can use it on Linux as well.
For MacOS, the closest ones are:
- https://apps.apple.com/us/app/commander-one-file-manager/id1...
- https://github.com/elfmz/far2l
And I mean the whole legacy of such stuff, all the way to Norton Commander under DOS. Don't remember if there was prior art to that.
Miguel de Icaza (of Gnome/Mono fame), also started, way before Gnome, by doing a Norton Commander clone: Midnight Commander