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Total Commander

ghisler.com

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Re: Total Commander

#31

Post by roselan »

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.

Re: Total Commander

#32

Post by blue1 »

A question for experts on the matter, is Sunrise Commander (OFM for Emacs) on par with the the programs cited in this thread?

Re: Total Commander

#33

Post by jahav »

nanna wrote: post #8
hereforcomments wrote: post #4

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. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=now%201-d&q=%2...

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'm wondering it if is similar to Emacs Dired

Two panels + fast keyboard navigation across directories is big for me. I like the overview, speed and simplicity. File Explorer is just ... nope.

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

Re: Total Commander

#35

Post by ihateolives »

blkhawk wrote: post #15

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/ Nowadays I use Krusader and Linux.

> Servant Salamander

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/

Re: Total Commander

#36

Post by Daril »

wiz21c wrote: post #24
qwerty456127 wrote: post #14

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…

Ah Norton Commander... I was wondering if someone would pop up the father of them all... Fond memories of that blue screen :-)

I cannot live without Midnight Commander !

Re: Total Commander

#37

Post by sneak »

Daril wrote: post #30
haspok wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try Krusader!

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.

You do yourself a disservice by avoiding them.

Re: Total Commander

#38

Post by AugustusCrunch »

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.)

Re: Total Commander

#39

Post by qwerty456127 »

Daril wrote: post #36
wiz21c wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah Norton Commander... I was wondering if someone would pop up the father of them all... Fond memories of that blue screen :-)

I cannot live without Midnight Commander !

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.

Re: Total Commander

#40

Post by RetroTechie »

rlv-dan wrote: post #26

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).

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