| Comparison of file managersThe following tables compare general and technical information for a number of notable file managers. General informationBasic general information about the managers: creator/company etc. |
Altap Salamander | Altap | 1997-08-15 | November 2, 2010; 2 years ago (2010-11-02) (2.54) | US$30 | Proprietary | Directory Opus | Jonathan Potter, GPSoftware | Amiga: v1 (1990-01-03) Windows: v6 (2001-06-18) | July 6, 2012; 8 months ago (2012-07-06) (10.1.0.0.4570) | A$85 | Proprietary |
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Dired | integral part of Emacs, part of the GNU project | 1974? | July 30, 2009; 3 years ago (2009-07-30) (7.17) | Free | GPL |
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Disk Order | LikeMac Group | 2004-02 | 2008-02-xx (3.0) | US$29.95 | Proprietary |
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Dolphin | KDE | 2006-06-07 (0.5) | 2012-01-25 (4.8.0) | Free | GPL |
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Dos Navigator | RITLabs | 1991 (0.90) | 1999 (1.51) | Free | BSD original |
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emelFM2 | tooar | 2003-09-06 | April 20, 2012; 11 months ago (2012-04-20) (0.8.1) | Free | GPL |
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FAR Manager | Eugene Roshal (original); FAR Group | 1996 | 3.0 build 3000 (December 8, 2012; 3 months ago (2012-12-08)) [±]
2.0 build 1807 (February 3, 2011; 2 years ago (2011-02-03)) [±] 1.75 build 2634 (February 3, 2011; 2 years ago (2011-02-03)) [±] | Free | BSD revised |
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File Commander | Brian Havard | 1993 | 2011-03-03 (2.40) | A$35.00 | Proprietary |
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File Manager | Microsoft (Ian Ellison-Taylor) | 1990 | 1999-11-30 (4.0.1381.318) | Part of Windows | Proprietary |
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Finder | Apple Inc. | 1984-01 | 2012-09-19 (10.8.1) | Part of OS X | Proprietary |
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Gentoo (file manager) | Emil Brink | ? | March 18, 2012; 12 months ago (2012-03-18) (0.19.13) | Free | GPL |
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GNOME Commander | GNOME Commander | 2001-09 | December 6, 2011; 15 months ago (2011-12-06) (1.2.8.15) | Free | GPL |
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Konqueror | KDE | October, 2000 | 4.10.1 (5 March 2013; 22 days ago (2013-03-05)) [±][1] | Free | GPL |
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Krusader | Krusader Krew | 2000-07-11 | 2.0.0 "Mars Pathfinder" for KDE4 (April 26, 2009; 3 years ago (2009-04-26)) [±] | Free | GPL |
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Midnight Commander (mc) | GNU Midnight Commander | < May 1994[2] | December 28, 2012; 2 months ago (2012-12-28) (4.8.1.7) | Free | GPL |
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muCommander | Maxence Bernard | 2002-02-17 | August 5, 2012; 7 months ago (2012-08-05) (0.9.0) | Free | GPL |
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Nautilus | Eazel | 2001-04-11 | 3.8.0 (March 27, 2013; 0 days ago (2013-03-27)) [±][3] | Free | GPL |
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Nomad.NET | Eugene Sichkar | 2008-08-14 (2.2.0.537 beta) | March 31, 2011; 23 months ago (2011-03-31) (2.8.7.1740) | Free | Proprietary |
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Norton Commander | Peter Norton Computing, later Symantec corporation | 1986 | 1999-02-01 (2.01 Windows DOS: 1998-07-01 (5.51)) | ? | Proprietary |
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Path Finder (originally named SNAX) | Cocoatech | 2001-04 | April 16, 2012; 11 months ago (2012-04-16) (6) | US$39.95 | Proprietary |
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PathMinder | Albert Nurick and Brittain Fraley | 1984 | 1988 (4.11) | US$39.95 | Proprietary |
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PCManFM | Hong Jen Yee | 2006-01-09 | August 13, 2012; 7 months ago (2012-08-13) (1.1.0) | Free | GPL |
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ROX-Filer | Thomas Leonard et al. | Before 2000-03-10 | October 9, 2011; 17 months ago (2011-10-09) (2.11) | Free | GPL |
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STDU Explorer | STDUtility | 2009-03-23 | May 24, 2012; 9 months ago (2012-05-24) (1.0.465) | Free | Proprietary | Thunar | Xfce | 2006-01-22 | December 2, 2012; 3 months ago (2012-12-02) (1.6.0) | Free | GPL | Total Commander (originally named 'Windows Commander') | Christian Ghisler | 1993-09-25 (1.00d) | 2012-08-03 (8.01) | CHF40, €32 | Proprietary |
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Volkov Commander | Vsevolod Volkov | circa 1992 | 4.05 (February 21, 2001; 12 years ago (2001-02-21)) [±] | shareware / freeware | Proprietary |
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Windows Explorer | Microsoft | 1995-08-24 | 2010 | Part of Windows | Proprietary |
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WinSCP | WinSCP | 2000-09-30 | 5.1.4 (February 18, 2013; 37 days ago (2013-02-18)) [±] | Free | GPL |
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Xandros File Manager | Xandros Corporation | ? | 2007-07-26 (4.2) | Part of Xandros Desktop | Proprietary |
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Xfe | Roland Baudin | 2002 | April 4, 2012; 11 months ago (2012-04-04) (1.32.5) | Free | GPL |
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Xfile | Rixstep | 2003-03-02 | 2007-02-19 (1.8.0) | US$79.00 (with 80+ other apps) | Proprietary |
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Xfm | Simon Marlow, Albert Gräf, Robert Vogelgesang, Juan D. Martin, Till Straumann | 1992 | 2001-09 (1.4.3) | Free | GPL |
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xplorer² | Nikos Bozinis | 2004-06-10 | 2012-04-18 (v2.1.0.2) | US$29.95 (lite: free) | Proprietary |
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XYplorer | Donald Lessau | 1997 | January 8, 2013; 2 months ago (2013-01-08) (11.90.0200) | US$29.95, €24.95
| Proprietary |
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ZTreeWin | Kim Henkel | 1996 | 2010-01-30 (2.1.061) | US$29.95 (1-4) | Proprietary |
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File manager | Creator | First public version (date) | Latest stable version (date, number) | Cost | Software license |
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Operating system support Cross-platform file managersThis table shows the operating systems that the file managers can run on, without emulation. Mac-only file managers *nix-only file managers Windows-only file managers Manager viewsIcon views represent files and folders as large icons Details + Thumbnails views and Favs-panel (bottom left) Information about what common file manager views are implemented natively (without third-party add-ons). Note that the "Column View" does not refer to the Miller Columns browsing / visualization technique that can be applied to tree structures / folders. - ^ Via multi-panel plugins or the ConEmu mod.
- ^ Column view is called Details view in Windows Explorer
- ^ Windows 7 introduces a Content view which shows details as well as thumbnails
Twin-panel file managers have obligatory connected panels where action in one panel results in reaction in the second. Konqueror supports multiple panels divided horizontally, vertically or both, but these panels do not act as twin panels by default (the user has to mark the panels he wants to act as twin-panels). Network protocolsInformation on what networking protocols the file managers support. Note that many of these protocols might be supported, in part or in whole, by software layers below the file manager, rather than by the file manager itself; for example, the Mac OS X Finder doesn't implement those protocols, and the Windows Explorer doesn't implement most of them, they just make ordinary file system calls to access remote files, and Konqueror either uses ordinary file system calls or KIO slave calls to access remote files. Some functions, such as browsing for servers or shares, might be implemented in the file manager even if most functions are implemented below the file manager. - ^ a b WebDAV support in these file managers requires the installation of NetDrive or Webdrive.
- ^ a b c d e NFS support in these file managers requires the installation of Services for UNIX.
- ^ a b Support is provided via a free 3rd-party plugin.
- ^ a b c FTP support in these file managers requires the installation of NetDrive or Webdrive.
- ^ a b SSH support in these file managers requires the installation of SftpDrive or Webdrive.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Support is provided by the underlying operating system.
- ^ a b c d e f Support is provided by GVFS
- ^ NFS support requires either the freely downloadable Windows Services for UNIX or is built-in starting with Windows Vista Enterprise and Ultimate editions as Subsystem for Unix-based applications (SUA).
- ^ WebDAV is supported via Microsoft Windows' built-in Network Places/Mapped Drive functionality.
File featuresInformation on what basic file features the file managers support. Browsing features Search featuresInformation on what file searching features the file managers support. RegExp include the possibilities of nested Boolean searches, thus implicitly all file managers supporting RegExp search support also Boolean searches. - ^ a b c Via plugins
- ^ a b Can integrate with Beagle to provide more searching functionality.
- ^ Search intersection
ExtensibilityInformation on which parts of the application can be extended by plugins. - ^ In Far 2.0 & Far 3.0+
- ^ Unicode support depends on Mac OS version. Mac OS X's Finder includes full Unicode support, while Mac OS 8 and earlier does not. May be supported in >=8.1 and <=9.2 if using unicode filesystems.
- ^ a b File and folder icons customizable on OS level and via folder properties
- ^ Main change in Total Commander 7.50
- ^ User can change toolbar icons
Notes- ^ "KDE Ships Plasma Workspaces, Applications and Platform 4.10". KDE. 02013-02-06February 6, 2013. http://kde.org/announcements/4.10/. Retrieved 02013-02-06February 6, 2013.
- ^ The exact history is unknown. This date comes from changelog entries in the src/TODO file in the Git repository (SHA1: eb6b3842a). But it is probably earlier than that. Dec 1997 was release v4.1 already.
- ^ Clasen, Matthias (March 27, 2013), "GNOME 3.8 released", gnome-announce mailing list, https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome -announce-list/2013-March/msg00081.ht ml, retrieved March 27, 2013
- ^ a b Directory Opus 5.82 Magellan II is the last commercial version available for Amiga. Full and registered version has been released for free with the AmiKit distribution. Directory Opus 4 is maintained separately under an open source license.
- ^ http://www.cs.cmu.edu/cgi-bin/info2ww w?(emacs)MS-DOS
- ^ http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/win dows/ntemacs.html
- ^ http://homepage.mac.com/zenitani/emac s-e.html
- ^ http://de5.aminet.net/util/gnu/em1934 src.readme
- ^ http://home.snafu.de/ohei/emacs/emacs 206-os2.html
- ^ http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsO nVMS
- ^ a b http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/KDE_ on_Windows/Installation
- ^ a b http://www.macports.org/ports.php?by= category&substr=kde4
- ^ Cygwin or unsupported native port
- ^ Runs in text mode inside Terminal window
- ^ Windows 95 and later
- ^ Windows Mobile
- ^ Content Dependent (System) refers to a system which attempts to detect the dominant type of files in that folder and then select the most appropriate view mode for you automatically.
- ^ a b Activating Image-Dired command in the graphical interface.
- ^ Tab-bar mode can be activated to show the tab-bar (else it will be hidden).
- ^ Optional image thumbnailer plugin since v0.3.4 (24/5/2007)
- ^ The text interface, which can be partially graphical with some plugins, such as embedded image/video viewers, for example. But the text interface is only emulated with the ConEmu mod - it is graphical and TrueColor in reality.
- ^ a b With the ConEmu mod or plugins
- ^ With ConEmu Far Manager plugin conemu-maximus5
- ^ Via "Mirrored Browsing" feature
- ^ Requires an additional licence (purchased separately)
- ^ Files matching certain user defined criteria (e.g. name pattern, attributes) are displayed in another color. Example: Since Windows 2000, the UI guide requires NTFS compressed files and folders displayed in blue, whereas uncompressed ones are black.
- ^ Mass Rename is a feature to rename large number of files in a convenient way and including a preview, see the screenshot for an example. Common options are subdirectory inclusion, wildcards, manual mode (offering to edit names as text files in editors), counters, time related fields (e.g. "date created"), path related fields (e.g. "parent directory name"), regular expressions etc.
- ^ Altap Salamander offers to show only selected files and hide unselected ones, also in picture viewer etc. For selection, the usual wildcards and add/subtract/intersect with 1...N stored selections are offered.
- ^ ACL is dependent on the type and version of file- and operating system. Altap Salamander offers quick access to owner, auditing and permission settings in WinXP with NTFS 5.
- ^ With plug-ins, or this can be implemented as a macros
- ^ a b Needs KRename, an application that integrates into Konqueror and Krusader.
- ^ Only text which is dragged from another program and dropped into a folder in Nautilus can be pasted as a new file.
- ^ Path Finder apparently integrates with Knox, an encryption utility.
- ^ a b c The encryption feature in Windows 2000 Professional, Windows XP Professional, and Windows Server 2003 is in fact a user-transparent filesystem-level encryption feature for NTFS. The file manager merely enables or disables it.
- ^ Supported up to Windows XP only. Document scraps are not supported in Windows Vista and later.
- ^ Via system File Properties dialog, NTFS-only. Must be enabled manually in Windows versions prior to Server 2003.
- ^ Via system File Properties dialog, NTFS-only.
- ^ Encryption is supported for Zip and Rar, other formats depend on the editable ARCHIVER.BB2 file
- ^ Cite error: Invalid
<ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named Plugin ; see the help page. - ^ Via plugins, or manual with helping of the embedded Advanced Compare.
- ^ Extensible via compression plugins, supported formats list depends on distribution package maintainer
- ^ Can be done in two steps
- ^ Save searches: Ability to save templates containing all search settings (file filter, metadata requirements etc.). Results of saves searches are always live, so not the results but the search conditions are saved.
- ^ Also known as iterative searches. For example the ability to finish one search and then perform a new search a) only within these results (intersect the two result sets / the requirements of both searches have to be met), 2) adding to these results (combine both result sets to a bigger set) or 3) subtract from those results (original result set reduced by intersection of result sets).
- ^ Altap Salamander Search offers RegExp for defining the file content.
- ^ Krusader - Twin Panel File Management For Your Desktop
- ^ After searching results, user can apply advanced visual filters to narrow down search.
- ^ ZTreeWin provides several context specific search syntaxes that are not pure regex
- ^ IFilters
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