I just stumbled on another double panel file manager today, called Double Commander and gave it a spin to see how it stacks up against TC. Apparently it's heavily TC inspired from the look of its UI. It very closely resembles TC in most parts including features wise but without the UI inconsistency that TC has been suffering from The GUI looks by far more consistent and organized. I also noticed some user's most requested features in TC such as background search (there are probably more), have been incorporated in DC. And huge plus is it runs on multiple platforms.
It's still in early development though, current version is 0.5 beta
Holy f, they basically stole the entire UI of total commander, and microsoft was pissed because C. Ghisler used the word "windows".
Am i the only one thinking this clearly must be a breach of some sort of intellectual property?
Provided my memory serves me right, then Christian Ghisler himself once stated that the makers of Double Commander have not stolen anything. They may be imitating large parts of the Total Commander user interface. But they have written their own source code without having access to any original Total Commander source code.
And let us face it: Total Commander itself, Speed Commander, Free Commander, Krusader, Gnome Commander and basically all file managers that present two file panels side by side are based on the ancient Norton Commander user interface and have adopted, preserved and often improved a lot of ideas and features of Norton Commander.
Norton Commander passed away a long time ago, but some of its imitators are still around and doing well.
Clearly this is way beyond borrowing the age old concept of two panes, but if C. Ghisler has no qualms about it, that's ultimately all that matters.
Me personally have no problems with it, would love to see it work on MacOSX.
crashed reproducable when i tried to remove some columns.
it certainly is the most promising TC-clone i am aware of, and i'm already following development for a while, but it has a long way to go. As it is now, it is no match for TC.... but when it becomes more stable (which judgeing current dev speed, may take years), it may be an interesting alternative, especially on linux.
karlchen wrote:And let us face it: Total Commander itself, Speed Commander, Free Commander, Krusader, Gnome Commander and basically all file managers that present two file panels side by side are based on the ancient Norton Commander user interface and have adopted, preserved and often improved a lot of ideas and features of Norton Commander.
Norton Commander passed away a long time ago, but some of its imitators are still around and doing well.
Sorry to be the one that have to tell you that but you are WRONG.
There have been Two Panel Filemanagers way BEFORE Norton Commander
on Systems like Amiga etc...
Sir_SiLvA wrote:Sorry to be the one that have to tell you that but you are WRONG.
There have been Two Panel Filemanagers way BEFORE Norton Commander
on Systems like Amiga etc...
Please, quote where I have stated that Peter Norton was the first one to publish a file manager using two file panels. He may have been third, fourth or fiveth only. Yet, nonetheless people will consider Total Commander, Free Commander etc pp Norton Commander clones, not Amiga clones.
karlchen wrote:And let us face it: Total Commander itself, Speed Commander, Free Commander, Krusader, Gnome Commander and basically all file managers that present two file panels side by side are based on the ancient Norton Commander user interface and have adopted, preserved and often improved a lot of ideas and features of Norton Commander.
Norton Commander passed away a long time ago, but some of its imitators are still around and doing well.
Sorry to be the one that have to tell you that but you are WRONG.
There have been Two Panel Filemanagers way BEFORE Norton Commander
on Systems like Amiga etc...
What I recall from the Amiga was Directory Opus, and that was like 1990.
I was an Amiga and ST and PC user but I thought I recall having 2 pane file management on the PC first.
I know this is not the point of the discussion, but caught my interest.
As i can see from the screenshots in that page, that is not a two-panel filemanager, even in its last version of 1993.
And there were many two-panel filemanagers on amiga much prior to Dopus, like filemaster, dutil, dirutil and others.
I beleive that first dualpanel was NC, or at least it was the first most popular dualpanel.
solid wrote:
As i can see from the screenshots in that page, that is not a two-panel filemanager, even in its last version of 1993.
And there were many two-panel filemanagers on amiga much prior to Dopus, like filemaster, dutil, dirutil and others.
I beleive that first dualpanel was NC, or at least it was the first most popular dualpanel.
Yes it was, you just pressed function key F8 to bring up the second panel.
I'm using DC on my Lubuntu netbook, it's clearly better than TC on Wine. It still lacks many things and has annoying quirks like that quick filter ignores directories, that is whatever you type, all are shown.
And I'd like to note that it's not just a clone, it comes with own ideas like interface for search plugins or internal file associations (which it got in 2007 or 2008).
I just downloaded Double Commander. I have to admit that I'm impressed so far. They have the feature that I've always wanted (mark files when TC/DC is inactive), their options configuration is more user friendly I find. I find it a bit slower to use (feels like a Gnu style more than native with sluggish rendering). Love fast right click menu rendering.
It seems to remember the last directory selected for each tab, that's cool. I tried the AceHelper File system plugin. Not quite the same behavior found in TC. TC displays process icons where DC doesn't, kind of sluggish.
Conclusion:
DC is open source, TC is not. TC is far more mature in my opinion but If I were to use Linux, I would not select TC on wine but rather DC would seem to do the job just fine.
Sir_SiLvA wrote:Sorry to be the one that have to tell you that but you are WRONG.
There have been Two Panel Filemanagers way BEFORE Norton Commander
on Systems like Amiga etc...
Please, quote where I have stated that Peter Norton was the first one to publish a file manager using two file panels. He may have been third, fourth or fiveth only. Yet, nonetheless people will consider Total Commander, Free Commander etc pp Norton Commander clones, not Amiga clones.
Karl
This was your wording in the original post:
"And let us face it: Total Commander itself, Speed Commander, Free Commander, Krusader, Gnome Commander and basically all file managers that present two file panels side by side are based on the ancient Norton Commander user interface".
To me, that doesn't sound like thinking it was "third or fourth or fifth"... Maybe you didn't think it [was the first], but sure sounds like you did.
Hm, you are right. My written words may easily be interpreted the way Sir_SiLvA did.
What I was trying to get across, however, was this:
Double Commander may be imitating Total Commanders features and its look. Yet, Total Commander was not the first file manager having two file panels. Like other file managers, Total Commander is a Norton Commander clone.
At this point, I did not think too much about the question whether Norton might be a clone of even older software.
All I wanted to state was that developing another two panel file manager does not break any law.
The GUI looks by far more consistent and organized. I also noticed some user's most requested features in TC such as background search (there are probably more), have been incorporated in DC. And huge plus is it runs on multiple platforms.
