The History of Development of Norton Commander (2010)

http://www.softpanorama.org/OFM/Paradigm/Ch03/norton_commander.shtml

by quijoteuniv • 6 years ago

67 59 6 years ago

I remembered about Norton Commander today when I opened a second window of "Files" in Ubuntu to do some tidy up and moving around of files.

soapdog• 6 years ago

Why not use midnight commander on ubuntu?

extro• 6 years ago

mc is disgusting.

quijoteuniv2• 6 years ago

Will check it out :)

radoslawc• 6 years ago

There's quite good Worker file manager: http://www.boomerangsworld.de/cms/worker/

1wd• 6 years ago

Double Commander is another alternative. Open source, cross platform, actively developed (in Free Pascal and Lazarus) https://doublecmd.sourceforge.io/

empressplay• 6 years ago

Pre-Windows 95 every PC I owned or configured booted into this.

xiphias2• 6 years ago

FAR manager is still a nice way to manage files in a 2-pane mode on Windows

AtlasLion• 6 years ago

I still use it daily.

Andrew_nenakhov3• 6 years ago

Left windows years ago and not looking back, and FAR manager is the only software I miss on Ubuntu. midnight commander doesn't even come close, unfortunately.

valeg• 6 years ago

There is a port of sorts: https://github.com/elfmz/far2l Still an early stage but nonetheless.

LeoPanthera2• 6 years ago

Norton Commander is to DOS as Directory Opus is to the Amiga.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directory_Opus

danielbarla• 6 years ago

I noted with some interest (now about 20 years ago) that Directory Opus had gotten a Windows version. It still seems to be alive and kicking, which is good to see!

graycrow3• 6 years ago

I have stopped using Windows, but the only software that I miss is a modern NC clone called Far Manager [1].

[1] https://www.farmanager.com/

LeoPanthera2• 6 years ago

Have you tried Midnight Commander?

graycrow3• 6 years ago

Of course, but MC is (to put it lightly) not feature complete :) Ended by using MC, far2l (Far Manager 2 Linux clone) and Far Manager 3 under Wine depending on a task, but nothing can compare to native Far on Windows.

atemerev3• 6 years ago

Far for Linux now works well. But I have adapted to mc since then.

Andrew_nenakhov3• 6 years ago

TIL Far for Linux exists! Will go check it out now.

_ZeD_• 6 years ago

Still using Total commander on my android phone

mbeex2• 6 years ago

IMO, this port is subpar. Ghislers original is "the best thing since sliced bread", I'm using it for more than ~20 years and it is the first software I have on USB flash drive or install (copy) to a new Windows machine. But the mobile version never clicked for me. I'm using X-plore on Android for ~2 years now and I'm quite happy with it. It is also the only app I could find, that supports Windows shares in a rather hassle-free way.

klaustopher• 6 years ago

I was always a fan of XTree[1], was always more intuitive to me than norton commander.

Still have the shortcuts in muscle memory `xtg` for the win

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XTree

RoryH• 6 years ago

Came here to basically say this :-)

ghaff• 6 years ago

I liked Xtree. I actually had my own DOS file manager (Directory Freedom) but that was deliberately kept very small and fast. I liked Xtree for when I wanted to look at or work with the whole directory structure.

yjftsjthsd-h• 6 years ago

It was published by Underwear Systems, later Executive Systems, Inc.

Beautiful.

kasperni• 6 years ago

Sweet memories... [1] is a great walk down memory lane.

[1] http://www.softpanorama.org/OFM/Paradigm/Ch03/norton_command...

dusted• 6 years ago

I never used NC much, but I recall a friend of mine having a DOS PC that booted into it.. When I first ventured into linux, I was not good with the command line, and was very pleased to find MC, it helped me a lot until I got the hang of the CLI.

graycrow3• 6 years ago

There also was Volkov Commander (VC) - a faster and smaller clone of NC. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkov_Commander

SomeoneFromCA• 6 years ago

There is also Dos Navigator, a slower and bigger clone of NC.

hestefisk• 6 years ago

I started my computing career as a 5 yo in Norton Commander on a 8088 Intel machine.

atemerev3• 6 years ago

I still use Midnight Commander on the daily basis. It is immensely useful for e.g. exploring a large codebase. I don’t know why it is frowned upon by many people.

fb032• 6 years ago

I am sure the reason is irrational and involves pseudo geek points for 'hey, i am not using anything graphical at all!'

Midnight Commander is awesome and together with Byobu you're all set for full fledged terminal-only speedy filesystem exploration.

mlukaszek• 6 years ago

This. Installing Midnight Commander is one of the first things I do on a fresh *nix system, next to installing vim. :) Heck, I even have it installed on Windows in WSL - it's a life saver, allowing to navigate really fast, as well as connect to remote locations (SCP, SFTP...) to copy files around.

Yaa101• 6 years ago

MC is great but very slow when copying or moving a lot of small files, when I have a task like that I use SpaceFM in the GUI.

azalemeth• 6 years ago

Meant genuinely and with 0% troll: why? What does it get you that ls (-ltr and optionally |less) doesn't? I know that some people love mc and I've never...got it. I've never really asked them in great detail.

What are the 'killer features' of MC over the more "usual" *nix tools of find/grep/ls/awk/sed/vim? I'd love to know if I'm missing a trick!

blackfawn• 6 years ago

What I like most about MC is oddly off by default. Under "Options" > "Panel options" there is an option under "Navigation" for "Lynx-like motion". Once this is on, you can navigate in/out of directory structures with the left and right arrows on your keyboard. It makes it super quick and easy to move around a file system without a bunch of successive cd/ls/etc commands (or other tools)

atemerev3• 6 years ago

Exploration — you are entering the unknown codebase, and you _see_ file and directory structure, presented before you. The unix tools are good if you planned beforehand what are you going to do; mc is great for when you don’t know yet.

Targeted selection — it is really easy to select 20-30 files arbitrarily to e.g. copy them to the new directory. With cp/ls, it takes much more time.

dt3ft• 6 years ago

Darn. I loved NC.

stiray2• 6 years ago

I am still using total commander which has proven as by far best gui replacement while I have never found any text based even close (any suggestion is welcome but mc is not it) as far it goes regarding tc tooling and integration of plugins. Or search (and replace) for files etc. I never really understood why something like explorer copies are used on all systems.

Anyway if someone wants to try, https://www.ghisler.com/ while here are 3rd party plugins: https://totalcmd.net/ There is more than meets the first glance and one huge benefit is that you dont need to use mouse. At all.

therealmarv• 6 years ago

Yep, it's the best but more a successor of Norton Commander. I even miss Total Commander on macOS sometimes. At least Forklift (macOS) does the job also quite well.

obscura• 6 years ago

I've also been using it for years. Its feature range and performance is phenomenal.

luckylion• 6 years ago

Total Commander was one of the tools I really missed when I completely switched to Linux a decade ago. Krusader is nice, but it still pales in comparison and isn't actively developed. I haven't found any other two-pane file managers that are available on Linux and come close in features.

cryo• 6 years ago

I'm currently developing another file manager for macOS, Windows and Linux named 'cryo' which also has a dual-pane mode.

It's not yet as future rich as other commanders but hopefully will be in the upcoming months.

https://cryonet.io

stiray2• 6 years ago

A suggestion, study very closely how plugins in TC work and even more on which places: like file system plugin also working in search dialog. Implement support for TC plugins, you will gain enormous ecosystem for almost free.

Check its viewer and find in files options (utf8+utf16+regex+office files and then combining everything with git plugin (or one of other plugins) where commit comment contains something not matching to another regexp. And on top of everything it is very simple to make it happen).

Do study TC, it is by far the most complete file manager on any system, in any time and extremely well thought of. There is just nothing that compares beyond "I have two pane file manager".

It is visually outdated and it doesn't run on all platforms but it is really really hard to beat in features (like rename all *.cpp in all directories and subdirectories to #filename#-#dateofcreation#-#gitrevision#-#gitbranch#.cpp or use parts of exif header to rename file). I would love to have multiplatform alternative (as I have dumped the windows due to w8 and w10 abominations) for TC but I just dont see how this could be achived without really, REALLY huge engineering effort.

You might figure out that it is not worth competing against it for its licence price of 37 euros (27 for students) and "shareware" version without limitations except nag screen.

ExpiredLink• 6 years ago

On Windows FreeCommander is a good free Commander. https://freecommander.com

AdrianB1• 6 years ago

Norton Commander was in the autoexec.bat of virtually every computer I saw between ~1992 and 1998. Dos Navigator replaced it for a while, then Windows Commander, later renamed to Total Commander. I still have Total Commander pinned to the taskbar of every computer I use, I bought a few dozen licenses back in ~ 2008-2009.

In ~ 1994 I wrote a limited feature clone of NC in FoxPro just to show some colleagues in college that it can be done fast and easy. It motivated them to learn FoxPro and a few become developers using it for the next 5-10 years.

DominikD• 6 years ago

Dos Navigator was such a great productivity tool! Guys who made it (Ritlabs) went on to develop TheBat! email client which was also pretty amazing.

AndrewDucker• 6 years ago

I know someone who still uses ZTreeWin (a clone, for Windows) all the time. It looks incredibly quick, with lots of useful shortcuts.

sydd• 6 years ago

ahh the only useful product Norton ever released :)

uvatbc• 6 years ago

Norton editor was another masterpiece.

Pre acquisition Norton products were amazing.

KingOfCoders• 6 years ago

LOVED it.

stephankoelle• 6 years ago

Some people might not be aware that dolphin is pretty good split window file manager.

mbeex2• 6 years ago

I have to agree. As a heavy user of Total Commander and fighting the Krusader as well as Double Commander clones for some time, I switched to Dolphin after setting up a KDE-based Linux distribution. Its been years, since I did it the last time and I was quite reluctant. But it worked out much better than I thought in the beginning.

JeanMarcS• 6 years ago

Norton Commander is the reason I still use Midnight Commander on my servers !

My fingers know all the key shortcuts for decades now

begoon• 6 years ago

Nimble Commmader (https://github.com/mikekazakov/nimble-commander) is the real deal for dual panel managers fanboys with macs.

dang2• 6 years ago

Edit: URL changed from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norton_Commander.

This is probably too well-known a topic to justify a generic Wikipedia link. There are better articles available - for example, http://www.softpanorama.org/OFM/Paradigm/Ch03/norton_command..., which can be found either by web search or HN search. Perhaps we'll swap that URL in.

This issue with Wikipedia submissions has been coming up a lot lately. Recent explanations:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23249978

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23239405

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22990237

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23117614

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23089041

dang2• 6 years ago

Url changed from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norton_Commander, which points to this.

askariwa• 6 years ago

I remember Volkov Commander too. From Wikipedia :"Volkov Commander (VC) is a file manager for DOS inspired by the Norton Commander. Volkov Commander is purely written in assembly language, and is thus very small (less than 100 KB) and fast". It was really fast and really small when we had the 1.4 mb floppy disk back then.

The History of Development of Norton Commander (2010)

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