Update your file management game
with a little stroll down the memory lane
One of the most used functions of a computer is working with file storage and built-in file managers are mostly cumbersome. The biggest offender of this is Windows. Ever since Windows XP and the introduction of Explorer file manager it proved necessary to use a more advanced file manager as switching between different windows is highly ineffective.
Memory lane
My first introduction to file managers was with XTree Gold in old DOS. It was first released on 1 April 1985 and became highly popular. As DOS had no graphic user interface for browsing storage its popularity skyrocketed especially with support for the Zip compression format and the ability to undelete files. The program also has the benefit of requiring very little memory, essential at a time when less than 640 kB of memory was available for programs to run. There is no way to run it now without using DosBox or VDOS as it’s a 16bit application but there is a modern version of a similar file manager that was modeled upon the XTreeGold called ZTreeWin. But looking at it as a modern file manager, it is not. It’s also cumbersome and is missing a lot of creature comforts of modern user interfaces and you need to pay if you wish to continue to use it after 30 day trial period.
The first modern file manager appeared with Norton Commander, and it quickly became a standard in managing storage. It was written by John Socha and released by Peter Norton Computing and in 1990 was acquired by the Symantec corporation. NC provides a text-based user interface for managing files on top of MS-DOS. The last version was released in 1998.
Norton Commander spawned an entire category of file managers with almost all subsequent modern file managers following the same principle of dual panels and the distinct blue theme also became known as the Norton theme.
Today, there are two popular file managers that are almost identical with little difference with one being quite popular on Linux systems. The first one is Far Manager
and the second and more popular is Midnight Commander. They are both active open-source projects with Midnight Commander being the older sibling to Far Manager.
Midnight Commander or MC is my choice of file manager for Linux systems.
Total Commander
Now, let’s look at a true powerhouse of file management. Total Commander or formerly Windows Commander is a shareware file manager for Windows developed by Christian Ghisler. I’ve been using it for almost 25 years and can be said that it was and is my primary interface with all things storage on my computer and is one of the first programs I install on all computers when doing fresh windows install.
After a couple of years of use, and while developing Windows Locker I noticed familiar names of components in use by Total Commander and it turned out that it was programmed in Delphi. The same programing language I was using way back and my appreciation of it just grew.
The latest version is developed with Lazarus, an open-source version of Delphi 7, the best version of Delphi.
Total Commander features a built-in FTP client, tabbed interface, file compare, archive file navigation, image views, and a multi-rename tool with regular expression support. One of the features I use regularly is the search function. It can search by filename, within archives, or find text within files. It saved my bacon more times than I could count. If you press the Space key on the focused directory you can get the total size of that directory, quite a helpful feature.
It is Shareware but doesn’t get that to dismay you from giving it a try. The limitation is that each time you start it tells you to press one of three numbers and that’s it, no further limitations. If you find it helpful, please support it.
And recently it got even better, Christian made a dark mode for it.
Among its many tools, the one I started to appreciate of late is its internal compare tool. It’s simple, powerful, and actually readable.
The closest competitor to Total Commander can be found in Altap Salamander. Altap Salamander from version 4.0 become freeware for both commercial and non-commercial use. It is missing tabs which have become a necessity but other than that it’s a good free alternative to Total Commander.
There are similar file managers with one being MuCommander but as it needs you to install Java I would skip it.