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Total Commander

ghisler.com

41–50 of 108 posts

Re: Total Commander

#42
post #31

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.

Check out the full changes file, it has dates of changes:

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

Re: Total Commander

#43
Total Commander lacks many useful features from Norton Commander.

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.

Re: Total Commander

#44
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).

Could you guys give some examples of “heavy workloads” or “serious work”?

Re: Total Commander

#45

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 on…

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?".

Re: Total Commander

#49
I haven't used it for decades, but when I did use it, it is amazing how efficient it is.

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

Re: Total Commander

#50

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 on…

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.
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