So, which file manager is the best across many OSes? Click more and cast your vote!Note: Thank you for voting. The poll is now closed.
Poll: Vote for your Favorite File Manager
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Side-by-side panes and integrated ftp client.
ls | xargs “rm -f” =)
What else do you need?
Maybe rm -rf /*
But who cares? =)
Anything that can be done via an X server can be done while sitting at a TTY.
Need I go on?
See above.
as a mac/solaris to windows guys (it’s a work thing, not my preference) my biggest beef with windows explorer is that there is no way to automatically calculate the total size of a directory without going to properties. at least the mac finder would let me view a list of folders with the calculated sizes.
it’s such a pain in the ass if my hard drive starts filling up and I’m just trying to track down the blockage. does anyone know a work around for this problem? (aside from switching operating systems..)
I voted for OS X, which is also meant to be a vote for NeXT. I do think the Xandros file manager deserves attention though, as others have said.
ROX ..ehh… rocks.
Ah yes, I used DiskMaster for years on my A500. In retrospect, I think it’s likely that Directory Opus must have been atleast a little inspired by DM.
I did in fact mention Gentoo before you did
[comic book guy voice]
Best file manager, ever
[/comic book guy voice]
Seriously, though. ROX is by far my favorite file manager, with Konqueror coming in second, followed by Nautilus, then Windows Explorer. I’m not rich, so I don’t have Mac, so I can’t comment on the Mac file mans, and I never used BeOS too much, so my comments on BeOS Tracker would be horribly under-informed.
But, from what I’ve used, ROX does it for me!
I’ve gone for BeOS. Although i’ve never used it (and currently use os x), i’ve read so much good about BeOS i’m convinced it rocked!
L.
One program beats them all. PowerDesk. I’m using PowerDesk 4.0 Pro, and it’s easily the best file mangaer I’ve ever used. With zip compression on the fly, graphics converters, a file preview pane, and simple layout, it’s the most robust file manager I’ve ever seen. Thanks Mijenix! I mean Ontrack, er, I mean V-Com. Who owns this company now? It doesn’t matter, this utility is second to none.
Click on my name for a link to the google directory listing for file managers. A lot of managers are available.
I think the poll is seriously lacking. I have used several of the file managers mentioned on this board.
I agree that nothing can compare with the power of the CLI, but sometimes I do use a GUI file manager.
I have been using OS X finder for some time now. One thing I like about finder is that I can drag a file from the finder in to the corresponding application on the doc to open it. If I download an Ogg Vorbis file I just drag it to itunes and the song will play (I have a plugin).
I also like using GNU Midnight Commander because of it’s speed and conveince. Using GNU MC in a terminal emulator isn’t always to friendly on the eyes, so I also use Gentoo the file manager.
Seeing as I don’t run windows I don’t know too much about the Explorer. IMO Explorer and Windows in general are just too unreliable and lack too many basic features like archiving and zipping software. Winzip is far more annoying than something like tar -xvz. Sure you can use DOS, but that is becoming more and more lacking and detached from the main system. I hate when I type ‘clear’ in DOS and it says “clear is not a valid system command, recognizable batch file…”.
The Mac OS 9 file manager is generally okay, but that system doesn’t have a CLI so I don’t know how I could even begin to run it.
I do think that the XP interface to explorer and Mac OS X finder are more intuitive for the average user to pick up, but honestly I really don’t see why these people aren’t taught how to use a CLI. They are just a capable as we are.
One last thing. I used to work at my college’s computer help desk. I can’t even begin to express how frustrating it is to explain GUI functions over the phone, “Click here. What does that say. Okay drag this here.” CLI makes this job much more easy.
This is a difficult choice…
I used NC a lot when I had my 386. It was a very handy file manager, especially for copying large directories with multiple floppies as it would remember what files it had already copied. Now that the Linux MC can also copy subdirectories it is really great. It is a fast program, easy-to-use, fast-to-use, intuitive, ….
The BeOS Tracker is also quite a good file manager, just like the Finder (is there any real difference between these?) but here the problem is this: when you browse many folders deep, you have so many windows popped up and you need two clicks to close a window on BeOS and MacOS (activate-close) which makes closing the unneeded ones take quite some time. Tracker is actually better than the Finder as it provides an option for Parent Directory. If you are 7 folders deep and need the folder above, in MacOS 7.5 and 8.5, which I have, you need to browse through all 6 levels again…
Then there is still the Windows Explorer. I would compare it with Konqueror, and then Konqueror wins for three reasons: 1) it does not freeze when logging in to FTP, 2) you can open a folder in a new window with one click, not right-click – browse – close sidebar, and 3) it can preview images.
Actually, the RiscOS file manager (filer) is quite good too, I think. About as good as the Tracker, as in essence it provides all functionality the Tracker provides too. Well, a bit better, the Filer can change file types, while the Tracker and Finder cannot as far as I know.
The command line can be handy in some cases, sometimes even better than NC, but for some operations I rather like the Windows Explorer…
So, here is my result: 1) NC (clone), 2) Filer, 3) Konqueror, 4) Tracker, 5) Finder, 6) Windows Explorer. 1-7) bash.
You can set OpenTracker and deratives to browse in one window (clicking on folder will not open new window but change current one).
I voted on Tracker. It’s best filemanager i used so far (i used also explorer, windows/total commander, norton commander, gnome file manager (nautilus right?) and konqueror), although it has lacks too.
i suppose shell can be really fast in use once You get used to it and know commands (or even better: write aliases and own functions
, but still GUI is more “userfriendly” IMHO.
Windows’ Explorer is the worse
vifm for vi lovers at http://vifm.sf.net .
wow… just commited to gentoo’s portage tree for any who want to see what they’ve been missing. incorporates two of my favorite programs, vim and screen.
<grin>
I miss my black slabs and cubes. The filemanager with its split pane metaphor was really nice. I found it enjoyable and productive.
From what I here, Konqueror in KDE 3.2 is greatly simplified. For example, the default right click menu, instead of the current, 15 menu items, has 5. KDE 3.2 in general focuses a lot on cleaning up the interface, so it should be a very interesting release.
No not the disto…. the file manager > http://www.obsession.se/gentoo. And it was out well before the distro .
Nice and simple and functional. Screenshots are at the bottom of the page.
I’ve used the default file manager that comes DOS, Win 3.11, OS/2, and Win9x/200/XP. The least intuitive was the Windows 3.11 file manager. The rest have done everything I’ve ever needed and for special situations (such as mass renaming) I was able to find a specific program for that task on the internet.
Rox for *nix, Powerdesk for Win. Got a taste of the NeXT file manager when I used NeXTStep on Win – like most of the NeXT interface, beautiful to look at and very functional.
Heard wonderful stuff about Tracker, but never really got to use BeOS. The “media OS” ran only in glorious black-and-white when I tried it on two different sets of hardware.
Try this out for about 3 days:
http://www.dopus.com
And then get back to us
Directory Opus – is there anything even on Linux that can touch it ?
really, i’m not an expert, but i really do find that the command line with a shell is seriously good… tab-expansion, command history, wildcards, occasionally renaming according to sed s/a/b/ logic… beats any pointy-clicky thing…
and i’m not averse to UIs… i use evolution and galeon over mutt and lyx… but when it comes to chomping files, the command line really shines when you want to just get stuff done ™!
I voted for Mac OS X, but it was really a vote for the original NeXT file manager. I find the shelf more useful than the OS X toolbar and the inspector panel was very elegant. BTW, there’s a fairly nice clone of the NeXT file manager for Windows: http://www.winbrowser.com
I always liked the RISC OS file manager too, it’s quite like the classic Mac Finder but with extra clever touches. However using it now I find it a little basic, unless I use enhancements like Director. The lack of a tree/column view can make dealing with large numbers of folders and files rather inelegant, I also miss document previews. Having said that I’d still much rather use it than the latest version of Windows Explorer or Konqueror.
I’m a command liner too, and yesterday I wish I wasn’t. I’d carefully managed to keep a spare linux partition on my linux laptop (from a time when it was running linux) and finally I booted into Knoppix yesterday and mounted the Linux laptop. I was going to scp my personal files over to my linux server and then reinstall *something*.
This had my last year’s worth of emails on it.
So I’m cleaning up some empty directories and accidentally type “rm -rf evolution” instead of “du -sk evolution”. Oops. Darn. Gone.
On ext3, there’s no going back.
Let’s put it this way: this kind of thing almost never happens if you’re using a graphical shell (especially one that kindly sends deleted files/dirs to a “recycle bin”).
Argh.
(Yeah, I’ve been doing computers for 12+ years. I know what I’m doing, but I had a brain freeze for half a second and paid for it dearly).
Maybe define:
alias rm=”mv $1 ~/Desktop/Trash”
That’s what I have done and it works great – maybe not for large operations or if you work on another disk, but as a normal user I guess it can be quite handy.
rm -rf instead of du -sk is a pretty large mistake. Actually it’s a pivotal mistake that a sys admin should never make. Also check what you type
No, the alias for me was alias rm=”~/Programming/rm” which was a shell script containing the rest of that line.
And why can I vote twice? It seemed I could not do this, but now that I viewed the page again I could suddenly vote another time (but not a third time). I used that vote to vote for OpenTracker, as if it supports one-window-browsing I think it must be really really great. As good as Konqueror and Finder added together.
The best file manager around is for me Directory Opus 4.x (Amiga
Only). I never found a better manager (even on Windows).
The BeOS Tracker is also quite a good file manager, just like the Finder (is there any real difference between these?) but here the problem is this: when you browse many folders deep, you have so many windows popped up and you need two clicks to close a window on BeOS and MacOS (activate-close) which makes closing the unneeded ones take quite some time.
If you hold down the Option key (windows key on PC keyboards) while double-clicking, Tracker will “clean up behind you” – in other words, that tells it to open the folder you’ve just double-clicked and close the parent. I’ve long wished that there was an option to make this the default behaviour – single-window browse is not a proper alternative because it defeats the purpose of a spatial filemanager.
ROX Filer is the best I have ever used. It has great intergration of keyboard navigation, DnD, auto or manual window resize and not least it is very very fast.
Along with its session program and pager applet the full ROX desktop is a real gem!
It was a GUI filemanager that could present itself as either one of two classic monolithic filemanagers (a light version and a heavier one, each roughly similar to the MDI folder interface present in the Win3x Filemanager), or it could be used as a series of folder windows either spawned from a tree view of the drive(s) on your box or from its System Information utility (the one that shows drive graphs) whose actual name I now forget.
It transparently handled ZIP, ARJ, and other archive files, came with its own media player and file viewer, and had a feature called the “Collector” which let one search across one’s drives for files that matched a specific set of criteria and put them in the Collector for later use.
The only thing it didn’t have that I missed was a 4OS2-like (or ZTreeBold-like) color-coding of filenames, but it optionally showed icons so you could identify file types.
I’m more and more addicted to ROX. It’s light, extensible and efficient.
PC Magazine’s 1988 vintage DR.COM does the trick for me.
8,500 bytes beats the multi-megabyte monsters any time.
Typed it in myself, many moons ago.
Floyd
Since the Directory Opus 4 source was released as GPL http://www.gpsoft.com.au/AmigaIndex.html has anyone tried porting it to Linux?
well, I use konqueror daily on Linux and am always horrified how slow it is. As soon as you have more than 1000 files in a directory the listview becomes sluggish when you scroll to the end. Loading a large directory can block the whole thing too. QT really needs a decently optimized listview. What they currently have is quite embarassing. I also do not like the selection in konqueror, it handles selection the whole column instead of just the filename which is not quite intuitive.
On Windows I use Directory Opus (yes, for windows) and it is IMHO much better than Total Commander. The rename functionality it has kicks ass. In addition its extremly fast.
On MacOSX, well, I simply use the terminal. The Finder is so dumbbed down that its hardly useable for more than launching apps…
for all of you wanting that NeXT feel…
http://www.gnustep.it/enrico/gworkspace/
been around for quite a while.
That’s why Konqueror rocks (and why I voted for it
, but first let me address the menus. I very rarely use them because I put everything I use on a daily basis on the tool bar. Just the most often used buttons that I want are there. One of these buttons happens to be terminal emulation. The greatest thing about it is that it puts you in the same directory as the one you’re already looking at. Combine this with split windows and you have the perfect file browser. I rarely use it for web browsing unless I’m running it through an ssh session, in which case having all that functionality in one GUI app is awesome.
It was 1992, i had acne and i was using pctools 5.0 deluxe for MSDOS
I voted for windows explorer.
When using bash, ‘mv $* ~/Desktop/Trash’ works better as a shell script since if you do rm *, $1 would be the first element in the list described by the regular expression *, but $* will put all the elements of that list there, so the rm replacement ‘mv $* ~/Desktop/Trash’ actually matches the behavior of what rm is supposed to do.
I decided to do this the other day when I deleted a file and had to work for an hour redoing everything I’d done. This was the result of having another script, em, which passes switches to emacs and runs it as a background process.
s/e/r/ # that sucked.
The best file manager around is for me Directory Opus 4.x (Amiga
Only). I never found a better manager (even on Windows).
Have you tried version 6.x for Windows? And if so, was version 4 for Amiga really that much better ?
I tell you what, I had never used ROX Filer before today, and after 10 minutes of playing around with it, I’m sold. I’ll not be using anything else.
Super small footprint, very fast, very configurable.
It also provides panel support and desktop icons.
Count me in on the ROX bandwagon
FSV on linux ( a clone of FSN on SGI ).
If I’m going to abandon the speed and power of shell for a GUI browser I want maximum visual information.. nothing beats the fly-by approach of looking at directorys relative sizes.. far easier on the eye than reading a bunch of numbers.
I don’t see how anything could ever top Directory Opus on the Amiga.
bash# mc
My personal top 3 file managers.
1. BASH
2. Total Commander
3. Midnight Commander
4. Windows Explorer (could beat mc but hasn’t got nice editors)
5. Krusader (a Total Commander wannabe)
No particular reasons why them, I am simply more productive with them. I wrote BASH because often use it as a file manager; I am much better at typing than clicking.
Both konqueror and nautilius sux. Windows Explorer leaves them far behind in both speed and useability.
My vote goes to NeXTSTEP 3.3’s Workspace.app. It’s totally the Best. File. Manager. EVER.
Does anyone know of any file managers do tabs well (like galeon, mozilla or myie2). I’d love to have the same sort of functionality in a windows filemanager, since I always have loads of explorer windows open. Right now I’m using crappy windows explorer, but I’m always looking for something new.
Does anyone know of any file managers do tabs well (like galeon, mozilla or myie2). I’d love to have the same sort of functionality in a windows filemanager, since I always have loads of explorer windows open. Right now I’m using crappy windows explorer, but I’m always looking for something new.
Best File Manager is XFM (Xandros File Manager)……..
Check this article on Explorer, Nautilus and Konqueror here: http://kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=3910
Feel free to comment and support, the user’s requests, IMO many of those things would mak Konqueror better.
Can’t imagine why anyone would pay for Total Commander when 2xexplorer is free. http://netez.com/2xExplorer/snapshot.html
Still looking for a linux file manager that suits me. Rox is nice enough I suppose, but I hate the way it keeps resizing, and if you stop the resizing in options it won’t save the settings for next time you open it.
Can’t imagine why anyone would pay for Total Commander when 2xexplorer is free. http://netez.com/2xExplorer/snapshot.html
Still looking for a linux file manager that suits me. Rox is nice enough I suppose, but I hate the way it keeps resizing, and if you stop the resizing in options it won’t save the settings for next time you open it. Also I’m addicted to double panes.
I’ll have to try some of these other ones. I should mention for linux that Worker and XNC aren’t too bad. And while I don’t like the look of MC, it sure is fast and convenient to use sometimes.
If you like polls such as this, you may be interested in the polls at http://www.linuxsurveys.com
Still looking for a linux file manager that suits me. Rox is nice enough I suppose, but I hate the way it keeps resizing, and if you stop the resizing in options it won’t save the settings for next time you open it. Also I’m addicted to double panes.
If you disable auto-resize you can still use manual resizing by double clicking on any empty spot in the Filer window.
For a tree type file manager [and SMB browser:) ] check out XFFM the file manager for XFCE4.
Emacs.
It does everything else I need to do, or acts as a frontend for the programs I run, and works almost the same on any machine big enough to fit it in. So, for a corss-platform filemanager, it’s emacs with dired.
You can’t beat emacs. It’s bigger than you are.
I’m so used to it now that it’s completely ingrained. The enhancements in eCS 1.1 are great and have certainly improved it even more.
On Windows, I like Windows Explorer, but especially later (>Win98?) versions that have the thumbnail previewing view
Also, as others have alerady said, command lines for doing bulk stuff quickly.
Personnally, I vote for the NeXT file manager… or, if you want something currently available, GWorkspace, a GNUstep file manager wich is the same as the NeXT one.
The Xandros File Manager is excellent. One of the best reasons to try Xandros.
>>> what about other important options like the RiscOS file manager, or the famous NeXT File Viewer, the precursor of the MacOS X three panel view?
>>No one uses these anymore, and people wouldn’t know about them, so the voting results would not be ideal.
But yah…everyone still uses the BeOS so people really know what the Be Tracker looks/feels/runs like, making those voting results quite ideal…
All you people praising konqueror must be using a different one than the one I have. The one I have (3.1.1) is awful, and lacks almost all features imaginable. (However, while the kio stuff like ssh, tar, ftp, CDDA, etc. browsing is great, I don’t count it as being part of konqueror but part of the KDE base.)
I can’t remember all zillion things that sucks with konqueror, but I can start with the ones that have annoyed me within the last hour or so:
– It doesn’t show free space in the selected directory! C’mon!!!
– File copy/move can’t resume! I mean, c’mon! I’ve spent 4 hours copying a file across a slow link when the network goes down momentarily when 98% done. I try to resume and it only asks to overwrite/rename/cancel/skip. (Well, at least it doesn’t remove partial files when aborting transfers like M$ Explorer does.)
– You can’t access the file transfer queue. I’m copying a few gigs of stuff when I realize that I don’t want to copy the next to last item I selected. I either have to abort the whole transfer, re-select the other files and restart the transfer, or I have to sit and wait until the unwanted file starts copying and then abort, remove the partial file, re-select the last file and re-start the transfer. I also can’t add files to be transferred to that queue. Thus there is no way to copy files between more than two dirs in one go. Stupid, stupid.
– Select two directories full of files, right-click and choose properties and it’ll say “2 items – 0 files – 2 directories”, and then when you delete those dirs you are happily unaware of your thousands of files being deleted. This probably isn’t so very bad once you are aware of this, but I wasn’t for a long time and I suspect I’ve deleted a lot of non-empty dirs that I thought were empty.
– Split a file listing “Left/Right” a few times to get several panes, and then try to drag’n’drop a file from one pane to another. Since the target pane is full of files you can’t drop the file anywhere because the whole row (of the “Name” column) of an existing file will be chosen as target. You actually have to scroll horizontally and then drop the file on another column.
– It caches A LOT, and it doesn’t update the cache when you re-visit the directory. The actual filesystem is thus seldom what konqueror shows unless you press “Refresh” all the time. In the last few hours it has also removed several files and directories from the file listing cache for no apparent reason. They reappear when pressing F5. (Why can’t it start with displaying the cached file listing and do the refresh in the background to ensure it’s up-to-date??)
– Selecting dirs with many files really shows the bad underlying design. The file listing isn’t updated until the whole directory has been scanned/cached. It isn’t even cleared, which gives the impression that the newly selected dir contains exactly the same files as the previously selected dir. It doesn’t even give a hint that something is happening! What’s even worse is that it doesn’t respond to anything while it’s scanning the dir. You can’t abort it e.g. by trying to select another dir instead. It seems that it doesn’t even repaint the window. What’s even worse is that it caches the mouse clicks you’ve done when you tried to change directory while it was so busy, and when it’s finished scanning through the dir it responds to those long ago sent mouse clicks! C’mon! Haven’t the developers ever seen a book on UI design? (Quite obviously not.)
– The dir tree doesn’t stay in sync with the active file listing. E.g. when dragging a file from the file listing and dropping it on another dir in the dir tree the other dir becomes selected while the file listing shows the contents of the first dir.
– The trashcan is a normal directory! This must be among the most stupid design decisions ever made. The trashcan doesn’t remember where the file came from. You can’t set it to keep only X MB of the last deleted stuff. You can’t set it to permanently delete stuff older than N days. You can’t even have two files with the same name in it at the same time! (Not even if they originally came from different directories. Not that that should matter.) This is absurd! (Perhaps the trashcan isn’t at all part of konqueror…)
– It keeps a lock on something in visited directories. This becomes apparent when you try to unmount something that konqueror has accessed at some point. You have to close the relevant konqueror window for it to release whatever lock it has in the mounted filesystem, so that it can be unmounted.
– The TABs won’t shrink after they fill up the whole row, so if you have many TABs you only see a few at a time.
The file managers that I’ve found to be least annoying is File Master on the Amiga and Gyula’s Navigator on Windows. I’m still looking for a usable file manager for linux.
My vote goes to RiscOS… at least, it would, but I’m not sure that it counts, as it would appear that I’m “no-one”, just like those other “no-ones” who don’t use it anymore (in the sense that I use it every day)…
Winfile.exe is the One True File Manager.
Konqueror, its fast and it has tons of features and views. it can do things finder cant and it dosent hang when opening “my computer” it looks great too.
Isn’t Mac OS X’s file system based in XML? Thought it was
DOSShell was the best, effectively but better and on DOS with text and graphics modes, oh, and themes
, closely followed by XtreePro and XtreeGold, Nautilus is really rather nice these days, although i do miss GMC sometimes.
emacs dir mode. thread closed.
I like command prompt in DOS/win; OS/2; and Linux. Also,
-Servant Salamander(nc clone) and
-Explore Cool(gfx preview window, no IE required!), which is a explorer/fileman.exe hybrid
in windows; and Konq in Linux.
Also, Krusader in Linux, or any other text/gui NC clone anywhere, anytime. I also like tree-type filemanagers for some types of dir organization.
Nice thread for the forums, btw
I STILL use a program called “DCOM” in DOS … It’s neat :] It might have been mentioned in past posts… but there’s way too many to sort through, so sorry if this is a dupe :]
I also like the fact that you can browse man pages in Konqueror. Just type man:<command name> in address bar (ie: man:cat), and there you go. Furthermore, references to other pages are hyperlinked. For instance, clicking on see also samba in man:smb.conf would bring up the samba man page.
When I see Nautilus being voted more upon than Amiga Dopus then I know: I can’t take the poll serious. How could it be ?!
Amiga is a computer mostly known in Europe. Amiga is not known by many. I assume there being much more Linux users than Amiga users. If you ask a Linux user why (s)he likes Nautilus they often say: You can bind scripts.
Uhohhahah. With DirectoryOpus any move of your body can be a script. Amiga applications are the most scriptable applications ever. Amiga applications are the most user-configurable, no, let’s call it ‘definable’ ever.
I used:
Windows-Explorer
Total Commander 16bit and 32bit versions
Nautilus
Konqueror
Gentoo
Gnome MC
MC (this one is missing, that is the second best for me, than comes Konqui)
OS8.x Finder
Directory Opus 4
Directory Opus 5
Directory Opus 6 for Windows
All in all Directory Opus 5 as Desktop replacement is best! I even implemented a MUA with it, using folders as directories and mails like archives.
Second on my list is plain MC, since I love to do it on the terminal.
Third would be Dopus4 and Konqueror. Konqueror being nice for its plugin-model.
Then comes Dopus6 for Windows, which does not really match up to the Amiga versions, mainly since they did not implement WSH scripting into it.
I do not know OS/2, OSX Finder nor BeOS.
.john
Am I the only one who finds the linux distros that emulate the windows gui environment ridiculous? Kind of like all the vegetarian products that try to be meat.
For the record, I am a vegetarian, and I eschew both windows and linux for the greener pastures of OS X and NeXT (R.I.P.).
that is the one i was just thinking! MC Rules!
Do you folks who use Gentoo think it would be easier if the buttons on the bottom had accompanying icons? Do you think it was just laziness on part of the developer not to add button icons?
that brought back memories. I remember that in those days, we geeks were divided into those who used Norton Commander and those who used PCTools. I just couldn’t getu used to PCTools, it had a weird interface. I was and apparently, still am, the NC kind of guy. Yesterday I installed FAR commander. This thing super-rocks.
Konqueror 3.1 also can have tabs as a filemanager, just press CTRL+ALT+N.
this one is the only one I use when I’m linuxing
I often switch between gnome and kde. I like Rox and Nautilus, but now I’m using Fluxbox and it’s konq all the way (can’t wait for 3.2). For slower systems, morphix light has XFce4 with Xffm is pretty fast too 🙂
ROX rocks
On Windows: Nothing beats Total Commander
On Linux: I bet on Krusader, which will hopefully reach the same level as Total Commander when versaion 2 will be ready
I’m amazed… it hasn’t been ruined yet?? This is the first poll I’ve been able to vote in… ironically, I have to make a write-in: ROX-Filer
NeXT Shelf!
I like Diskmaster 2 for Amiga and Enriva Magallen Explorer for Windows.
Total Commander rules for Windows… Midnight Commander for Linux… other then that.. i have no clue…
The best file manager is Microsoft Word
I will have to agree w/ IFightMIBs, and go w/ the OS/2 PM. That was the first thing that popped into my head when I read the poll. Then it turned out to be the first post…
Hey, 10 years after, I still use Dopus 4 on my pegasos
Old but incredibly powerful. Maybe in 10 years, something comparable will be available to the other platforms 
– what a waste –
🙂 Really it is the best!
“I’m amazed… it hasn’t been ruined yet?? This is the first poll I’ve been able to vote in…”
Thank you. The ballot stuffers have been doing a good job at spacing their votes with just enough time to make it look real. Keep up the good work men!
Worker is the file manager I use…
I’m glad I’m not the only one who still likes the Win 3.xx File Manager. Yes, it had its restrictions, but was fast and straightforward. Windows Explorer was less restricted, but had its own problems. And as much as I like BeOS, I really do not like the BeOS/Mac OS idea of single-paned windows to browse through files. I think it’s much better to have a two-paned window with the directory tree on the left and files on the right. Although Windows 95 and on also let you browse in the single-paned style if you really prefer it.
All of the above I have found to be great, although windows users don’t really “get” it. The windows users at my school are mostly versed enough in unix commands to get things done easier that way. You need a 1GHz+ machine to run Konq Nautilus or similar with any speed, and most of the machines I work with are 200-400 MHz era.
If you hold down the Option key (windows key on PC keyboards) while double-clicking, Tracker will “clean up behind you” – in other words, that tells it to open the folder you’ve just double-clicked and close the parent. I’ve long wished that there was an option to make this the default behaviour – single-window browse is not a proper alternative because it defeats the purpose of a spatial filemanage
Also under AmigaOS this is possible using the CTRL key, both navigating up or down in folder windows (but this is an OS plugin feature and not related with a *real* file manager and a little painful to use, like having to fiddle with Windows Explorer)… But there’s a good interaction (may be the best ever) between desktop and shell/cli, (and filemanager) added to the drag ‘n drop capabilities together with AppIcons (application icons that process dropped project icons) and the datatyping system…
Have you tried version 6.x for Windows? And if so, was version 4 for Amiga really that much better ?
I tried 5.0 on Amiga and I got back to 4.0 (I still have it on an Amiga that I didn’t use for nearky one year), I recently installed the trial of 6.0 on Windows, but it can’t be compared to the old 4.0 in functionality (maybe it’s windows fault and not Dopus’)… I have Dopus4.0 also installed on the WinUAE emulator, still very useful when I have to tidy up my Windows Partitions without having to get mad with Windows’ apps…
this one here: http://www.obsession.se/gentoo/ [gentoo] is the best one ive found. Has 2 different windows, very nice.
The version that came with NT (and 2000) is quite happy with long file names, although it is, of course, NT-specific. The nice thing about winfile was/is that it was small, simple, fairly clean, and made specifically for and with windows in mind. Yes, it could have done with a bit more work, but really MS made a mistake in abandoning it IMHO. Too bad they dropped the program manager out of win2k, with a bit of work it could have remained a decent low-spec or emergency shell w/winfile doing the file managing. Ah well.