6 ms·

Commanders! The first thing I install on literally any computer I touch. It's like climbing on the top of the hill (or mountain!) and overlooking the dense foli

Commanders! The first thing I install on literally any computer I touch. It's like climbing on the top of the hill (or mountain!) and overlooking the dense foliage. I really don't establish a mental connection with the machine until I have a commander running. Doing any disk operations in the Explorer, whatever else drag-and-drop there is, or just plain shell, is just pathetically painful and slow. Also, shout out to DOS Navigator! I used Norton Commander until 386DX-40, but then switched to the Navigator. Still remember I saw it first time in a shop where I was buying pirated games. The dude in the shop with the long hair was copying files and it looked uber-cool for some reason. I had to ask what was the name of this wonderful utility. He silently showed me the About dialog without turning back. There was no way back to NC from that point on my high-tower Pentium-133.

agentwiggles 4y ago
I guess stuff like Commander never quite got a hold on me because it feels easy to do everything at the shell. What kinds of benefits am I missing out on?
- orzig 4y ago
  Seconded. I am feeling the enthusiasm of people on this thread and I am really curious - if this could really make me as happy as it makes them I’m totally game, but I just don’t see where it would fit into my workflow. Can some people give more concrete examples of what they use it for?
  - saiya-jin 4y ago
    2 panes (both heavily tabbed so more like 10-15 of them representing various projects/activitives, tabbing for some reason works better mentally than bunch of explorer windows) is great concept, you always move from A to B if organizing/copying/moving. When I see people trying to achieve something in explorer, its literally 10x slower, and I speak of people doing it for living in bank, like desktop support guys. Alt+F7 -> fulltext search, only in given file types, in archives (recursively), limiting for size, date, regexp etc. - way more powerful than any other tool I've ever used. Viewing and editing files directly in archives (or in archives in archives in archives) without manually unpacking - as mainly java dev I do this very often. Again the speed and convenience is unmatched. Very good built-in multi-rename tool, with preview of changes, GUI for this is so much better than any command line tool. Very good file comparison tool - cleaner than anything other products (or dedicated ones) bring. I don't want to end up listing all features of Total commander, but suffice to say its too my first tool to install (after firefox with ublock origin). Its not as much about how content I am using it, but whenever I see colleagues doing similar actions, they are maddeningly slow, ineffective and sometimes even give up for task that takes me few seconds. But that's full time usage of 2-pane mode since 1993, never saw any appeal in those simple explorer-like windows when I can be super quick with few shortcuts.
    - agentwiggles 4y ago
      Thanks for taking the time to type this out, definitely motivates me to give it a look!
  - b3lvedere 4y ago
    I grew up with MS-DOS. After Dosshell i started using Norton Commander. Nowadays i use Total Commander of Double Commander. For me personally the main benefit of commanders is having data in point A and point B simultaneously in a single gui and then do stuff like copying, moving, etc between those points. Other benefits are i like fast file editing, quickly exploring an archive or zip file and scheduled copy/move tasks.
  - pantulis 4y ago
    I used extensively Midnight commander on a SunOS workstation for quickly browsing source codebases that spanned thousands of files without launching XEmacs. But for me the killer feature was having special popup menus (configurable per directory!) that could launch scripts on top of the selected files was pretty powerful. For example in the pre-subversion days I could check-in a bunch of files that were changed into the repository using a proprietary tool from my employer with just a couple of keystrokes.
  - pilina 4y ago
    I am not a dev. But I've built dependency on following workflow: Navigating to right file -> taking full path to clipboard (Ctrl + Shift + C) -> switching to work app, e.g. CAD (Alt + Tab) -> Open dialog (Ctrl + O) -> Paste full path (Ctrl+V) and hit Enter. That's the main reason for I can't use GNOME and that awful GTK file dialog. I can navigate really quickly in commanders, because I've used them since I've started using computer - so that makes this workflow legit for me.
- dark-star 4y ago
  You only really benefit when you use it a while and know all the key bindings by heart. Most of these seem pretty minor but when you get used to them you totally miss them when you don't have Total Commander available. And it's hard to explain to people, similar to explaining why one uses Dvorak layout or a Tiling WM to someone who has never thought about using those. Some examples: - selecting files to work with. add, remove to your selection by pattern or manually (e.g. all *.jpg files except the two largest) and work on those - move files to subdirectories without first creating a subdirectory (it creates it on-the-fly) - multi-rename tool. select some files, rename them (with auto-incrementing counters, regex, taking substrings of the original name, etc). This is the killer feature for me (e.g. rename files with timestamps like dd-mm-yy-something.jpg to yyyy-mm-dd (SOMETHING).jpg or things like that. Oh and you can use fields from metadata too (id3, exif, ...) - very fast integrated text/hex viewer with selectable codepages, ansi/ascii switch, and support for images and other multimedia files - incremental search in file lists - directory sync. compare and sync different directories by copying files one way or both ways - everything done via keyboard, no need to move the hands to the mouse and back for anything - integrated command line, so you can still type something like "cd \\server.domain.local\share$" and instantly have that directory in the tab (you cannot "cd" to an UNC path in cmd.exe) - opening and working with tar, zip, rar files as if they were regular files. and with plugins you can even open disk images as if they were files - another nice feature I totally like but which is hard to explain: you copy files simply by pressing f5 and enter. but when you press f5 a second/third time before pressing enter, the textbox selection (for the destination filename/path) switches through the full path, the filename+extension and the filename. So you can easily copy a file and change (overwrite) the filename in the destination just by pressing f5, f5, newnamehere, enter. It keeps the extension and the path you have open in the second window. True, you can do this with tab completion on the command line quite easily too, but you still have to press tab multiple times (depending on the uniqueness of the path maybe a lot more often), and you still have to type the extension by hand - did I mention plugins? viewer-plugins (I have one that interprets ANSI sequences, for example, for vieweing those cool 90s stype BBS ads), packer plugins (I wrote a lot of these to unpack/access data files from old games), etc. - for retro enthusiasts: PORT connection (through a parallel LapLink cable or USB data transfer cable) to another PC running Total Commander. No network necessary. - full text search (ascii, hex, unicode) through all files (or only selected files/directories), including in archive files, with multiple patterns and excludes: alt-f7, ".c;.h|~.",alt-t, "printf" -> search for "printf" in all .c and .h files except those that start with a tilde. After the search you can send the result list to the left/right panel and work with it as if it were a regular directory. i.e. select all files that match "data." and copy them to a different directory (even though the source files are scattered throughout an entire directory tree). Of course you can also seach by metadata (only files/directories/readonly files, timestamps, limited directory depth, file size larger/smaller than X, and with the right plugins by metadata like id3/exif too ...) Yes, for all these things there are either separate tools that do the same (maybe even better): multi-rename tools exist, opening matroshka-archives (zip in zip in tar in gz) can be done with 7zip, and there are plenty of image viewers out there that offer more features than the integrated viewer. RSync can do synchronization a bit better. but here you have it all in one place
- IlliOnato 4y ago
  I am sure your question is serious, but it sounds a little bit like "What can I do with a spreadsheet that I cannot do in code?"...
pantulis 4y ago
DOS Navigator was the definitive dual pane file manager for MSDOS, no doubt!

agentwiggles 4y ago

I guess stuff like Commander never quite got a hold on me because it feels easy to do everything at the shell. What kinds of benefits am I missing out on?

orzig 4y ago
Seconded. I am feeling the enthusiasm of people on this thread and I am really curious - if this could really make me as happy as it makes them I’m totally game, but I just don’t see where it would fit into my workflow. Can some people give more concrete examples of what they use it for?
- saiya-jin 4y ago
  2 panes (both heavily tabbed so more like 10-15 of them representing various projects/activitives, tabbing for some reason works better mentally than bunch of explorer windows) is great concept, you always move from A to B if organizing/copying/moving. When I see people trying to achieve something in explorer, its literally 10x slower, and I speak of people doing it for living in bank, like desktop support guys. Alt+F7 -> fulltext search, only in given file types, in archives (recursively), limiting for size, date, regexp etc. - way more powerful than any other tool I've ever used. Viewing and editing files directly in archives (or in archives in archives in archives) without manually unpacking - as mainly java dev I do this very often. Again the speed and convenience is unmatched. Very good built-in multi-rename tool, with preview of changes, GUI for this is so much better than any command line tool. Very good file comparison tool - cleaner than anything other products (or dedicated ones) bring. I don't want to end up listing all features of Total commander, but suffice to say its too my first tool to install (after firefox with ublock origin). Its not as much about how content I am using it, but whenever I see colleagues doing similar actions, they are maddeningly slow, ineffective and sometimes even give up for task that takes me few seconds. But that's full time usage of 2-pane mode since 1993, never saw any appeal in those simple explorer-like windows when I can be super quick with few shortcuts.
  - agentwiggles 4y ago
    Thanks for taking the time to type this out, definitely motivates me to give it a look!
- b3lvedere 4y ago
  I grew up with MS-DOS. After Dosshell i started using Norton Commander. Nowadays i use Total Commander of Double Commander. For me personally the main benefit of commanders is having data in point A and point B simultaneously in a single gui and then do stuff like copying, moving, etc between those points. Other benefits are i like fast file editing, quickly exploring an archive or zip file and scheduled copy/move tasks.
- pantulis 4y ago
  I used extensively Midnight commander on a SunOS workstation for quickly browsing source codebases that spanned thousands of files without launching XEmacs. But for me the killer feature was having special popup menus (configurable per directory!) that could launch scripts on top of the selected files was pretty powerful. For example in the pre-subversion days I could check-in a bunch of files that were changed into the repository using a proprietary tool from my employer with just a couple of keystrokes.
- pilina 4y ago
  I am not a dev. But I've built dependency on following workflow: Navigating to right file -> taking full path to clipboard (Ctrl + Shift + C) -> switching to work app, e.g. CAD (Alt + Tab) -> Open dialog (Ctrl + O) -> Paste full path (Ctrl+V) and hit Enter. That's the main reason for I can't use GNOME and that awful GTK file dialog. I can navigate really quickly in commanders, because I've used them since I've started using computer - so that makes this workflow legit for me.
dark-star 4y ago
You only really benefit when you use it a while and know all the key bindings by heart. Most of these seem pretty minor but when you get used to them you totally miss them when you don't have Total Commander available. And it's hard to explain to people, similar to explaining why one uses Dvorak layout or a Tiling WM to someone who has never thought about using those. Some examples: - selecting files to work with. add, remove to your selection by pattern or manually (e.g. all *.jpg files except the two largest) and work on those - move files to subdirectories without first creating a subdirectory (it creates it on-the-fly) - multi-rename tool. select some files, rename them (with auto-incrementing counters, regex, taking substrings of the original name, etc). This is the killer feature for me (e.g. rename files with timestamps like dd-mm-yy-something.jpg to yyyy-mm-dd (SOMETHING).jpg or things like that. Oh and you can use fields from metadata too (id3, exif, ...) - very fast integrated text/hex viewer with selectable codepages, ansi/ascii switch, and support for images and other multimedia files - incremental search in file lists - directory sync. compare and sync different directories by copying files one way or both ways - everything done via keyboard, no need to move the hands to the mouse and back for anything - integrated command line, so you can still type something like "cd \\server.domain.local\share$" and instantly have that directory in the tab (you cannot "cd" to an UNC path in cmd.exe) - opening and working with tar, zip, rar files as if they were regular files. and with plugins you can even open disk images as if they were files - another nice feature I totally like but which is hard to explain: you copy files simply by pressing f5 and enter. but when you press f5 a second/third time before pressing enter, the textbox selection (for the destination filename/path) switches through the full path, the filename+extension and the filename. So you can easily copy a file and change (overwrite) the filename in the destination just by pressing f5, f5, newnamehere, enter. It keeps the extension and the path you have open in the second window. True, you can do this with tab completion on the command line quite easily too, but you still have to press tab multiple times (depending on the uniqueness of the path maybe a lot more often), and you still have to type the extension by hand - did I mention plugins? viewer-plugins (I have one that interprets ANSI sequences, for example, for vieweing those cool 90s stype BBS ads), packer plugins (I wrote a lot of these to unpack/access data files from old games), etc. - for retro enthusiasts: PORT connection (through a parallel LapLink cable or USB data transfer cable) to another PC running Total Commander. No network necessary. - full text search (ascii, hex, unicode) through all files (or only selected files/directories), including in archive files, with multiple patterns and excludes: alt-f7, ".c;.h|~.",alt-t, "printf" -> search for "printf" in all .c and .h files except those that start with a tilde. After the search you can send the result list to the left/right panel and work with it as if it were a regular directory. i.e. select all files that match "data." and copy them to a different directory (even though the source files are scattered throughout an entire directory tree). Of course you can also seach by metadata (only files/directories/readonly files, timestamps, limited directory depth, file size larger/smaller than X, and with the right plugins by metadata like id3/exif too ...) Yes, for all these things there are either separate tools that do the same (maybe even better): multi-rename tools exist, opening matroshka-archives (zip in zip in tar in gz) can be done with 7zip, and there are plenty of image viewers out there that offer more features than the integrated viewer. RSync can do synchronization a bit better. but here you have it all in one place
IlliOnato 4y ago
I am sure your question is serious, but it sounds a little bit like "What can I do with a spreadsheet that I cannot do in code?"...

pantulis 4y ago

DOS Navigator was the definitive dual pane file manager for MSDOS, no doubt!