[AugustusCrunch]

I've done things that people thought were magic. It was TC. There are about twenty similar programs, all descended from the Norton Commander. Any one of them is enormously better than the file managers that come with most OSs, especially windows. Ive read estimates that say you're about four times as productive if you use on, and I think that may be very conservative. There are a lot of things you can't do without one. A friend worked at a place where management disabled the search function in windows, probably because people were getting stuff done. I set him up with TC, which has its own search. The IT lead at one place I worked said, "I don't like that program. it makes things easier than they should be." TC is the best of its kind. It's so good I paid for it. (I've had twenty years of free upgrades.)

[FirmwareBurner]

>Any one of them is enormously better than the file managers that come with most OSs, especially windows.

I duuno mate, I find the MacOS but especially the default Gnome file manager to be much more limited than the latest Windows Explorer in functionality. Gnome Files is a joke really, feels more like something on a mobile device.

The thing is, file managers that come with mainstream OSs are not designed to appease power users, as they will install their own personal favorite one anyway, but to make life easy for the average joe who doesn't know much about computers, files, extensions, etc. That's why they're so simplistic out of the box.

Something like TC, would be really confusing for the user who just wants to view the best photos in the download folder and drag and drop them to the Gmail in Chrome.

Trying to appease power users is an exercise in futility anyway, no matter what you do, someone will cry that his favorite and most used feature is still missing, so most SW companies don't even bother anymore with the tiny power-user market share if they also aren't paying customers. TC is one of the few exceptions that survived by including everything and the kitchen sink.

HN users should learn to detach themselves form the power-user mentality and empathize with the average joe who isn't tech savvy and has no interest in becoming tech savvy as they have other hobbies than learning how their computer works under the hood and becoming 40% more efficient with their file-management-fu.

[BelleOfTheBall]

I remember once I needed to rename a bunch of files to a template similar to NewName_001, upwards of 100. TC lets you just set a name pattern and follows it, which meant I did it in about 10 seconds. My colleague took 10 minutes and a lot of groaning about "why isn't there a better way?".

[sdtransier]

(This is just to help macOS Finder users, not to say, "Well, Finder can do it too!!)

You can select multiple files in Finder > Right-click on one of them > Rename. That'll bring up a modal with some bulk-rename options, including a name pattern. It's not intuitive, but was really cool when I found it for the first time!

[edanm]

That's awesome! I use a Mac-based software similar to TC (after years of using TC on Windows), and always use it for bulk renaming. I had no idea I could do the same with Finder, I'll definitely take advantage of that in the future!

[justsomehnguy]

That works similar in Windows Explorer

[rob74]

I've been looking for a Linux alternative ever since I mostly switched away from Windows a few years ago, and so far this one is the best FOSS alternative I found: https://doublecmd.sourceforge.io/ - it's even written in Pascal, same as TC.

[gilcot]

For GNU/Linux, you have Midnight Commander

https://github.com/MidnightCommander/mc.git

[rob74]

MC is great for the terminal, but I'm more of a GUI guy - Total Commander has introduced some improvements over the original Norton Commander (e.g. showing file icons, right-click context menus etc.) which I don't want to miss anymore...

[saiya-jin]

I've used norton since 1993 IIRC, the 2-pane model is properly baked in my mind. Now with tabs, it is magical. At least to literally all colleagues I've shown it. Lightweight, performant, stable.

Sftp client, great recursive file content search including archives, file comparison, editing files directly in archives, plugins etc.

The thing is, everybody is wow at efficiency boost but almost nobody picks it up afterwards, they go back to slow basic clunky multiple windows. When I see how slow they are (easily 10-20x, more complex stuff they have to use other programs ot cant do at all), even my otherwise calm manners become... less calm.

I've tried gui variants on linux when I was toying with ubuntu few years ago, unstable, slow, basic. I hope its better now.

[executesorder66]

> A friend worked at a place where management disabled the search function in windows, probably because people were getting stuff done.

> I don't like that program. it makes things easier than they should be.

Why are they trying to make things difficult for people?

[rpaddock]

"...disabled the search function in windows ... Why are they trying to make things difficult for people?"

If you do embedded system development it is best to turn Windows Search off.

Windows Search will write index files to devices that are not expecting to have such files written to them, which often bricks the devices. Old Freescale/NXP boards are particularly prone to this, until their bootloaders are updated, which can only be done on a Windows-7 machine.

Oddly if you do turn Windows Search off via registry key, then the Microsoft Store stops working correctly. I've never found that behavior documented anywhere.

[sceadu]

Infantilization and job security