Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

[gcmartin]

Developers and Administrators are 2 groups of people who are constantly comparing the contents of 2 files/folders for any comparative differences.

And for many of us, from time to time we all do it. In Microsoft, tools to do this comparisons stretch all the way back to Windows95 (over 16 years) and beyond (using the DOS Commander). In Linux, there are various methods to do so, as well.

Many/most of Puppylander's have and use dual-pane filemanagers for their duties, normally, which also meets their need for folder-file comparisons. Many brought this ability as a carry-over from MS or Unix as it is extremely beneficial in spotting things.

This article of 2016 re-emphasizes the ability and use of a dual-pane filemanager in Linux.

In Puppyland, we have not had tools to do this until recently thanks to the likes of 2 individuals.

• (32bit) @Pemasu has provided muCommander V0.85 (voted best FM in 2010 which does an excellent job for this purpose (get it from his REPO)
  
• @DPUP5520 has provided the latest muCommander V0.9 which continues to rank as best FM in Linux (PC Mag) which works in all 32bit PUPs tested, thus far.
  
• ASRI éducation has provided Spacefm
  
  
• Community member @Muggins provides the links to aditional FMs which provide similar functionality.
  
  
• (64bit) @JamesBond has provide emelFM2 which also (though similar) does an excellent job. (get it from his REPO)
  
  Other members offer these for similar ability
  
  • XFE mentioned here
    
  • Emelfm2 for 32bit mentioned here
    
  • Wish File Rusher mentioned here
    
  • 4Pane manager
    
  • DoubleCommander
    
  • Worker
    
  • Spacefm mentioned here
  • Sunflower
  • Caja
  
  And there are Text Versions run from ANY commandline in Linux
  
  • mc
    
  • Vifm

muCommander requires JAVA, emelFM2 requires GTK2+ and Sunflower requires Gnome.

I'm sure many users of all walks will find great benefit from the efforts of these FileManager (FM) contributions.

Praises!

[Gnuxo]

I like EmelFM.
But why not a quad pane file manager similar to qdir?

I like being able to drag files between four windows.

Better yet why can't you just configure the amount of panes or their width or length to create the most efficient file manager for you?

Sorry for the rant.

[Flash]

Gcmartin, do you mean to imply that one or both of those file managers can show directories which have subdirectories that contain many files, in a tree view that hides the files?

For example consider a library of mp3 audio books, each book comprised of many mp3 files, typically around 200 but sometimes more than a thousand. So a directory which is an author may contain several subdirectories, each of which is a book, each book (subdirectory) containing perhaps 200 or more mp3 files.

If I want to peruse such a library, I don't want to see the mp3 files, only the authors and their books in a tree view. I've been using tree -d to do this. It does just what I want, but, if there's another way I'd like to know about it.

[Geoffrey]

Spacefm is quite good, has upto 4 panes and the rightclick menu can be fully customized the same way as Thunar custom commands

[Gnuxo]

How does one install SpaceFM? Is there a .pet for it?

[Geoffrey]

[kooliepup]

[Lobster]

[muggins]

http://168hours.wordpress.com/2008/08/18/10-total-commander-alternatives-for-linux/

Sunflower sound interesting:

http://code.google.com/p/sunflower-fm/

Atol

4Pane (Newer version available on 4Pane website)

DoubleCommander binary works on slacko.

As does the TuxCmd binary.

[gcmartin]

Just a note of one of the features of the contributions I mentioned. (other FM tools may also have this feature, but, as of yet, I am not aware of the other tools. @Muggins, below post, makes an excellent article reference.)

If I have 2 folders visible using one of these tools, I can ask the tool to not only show me the differences, but also, make the folders identical....should I choose. Or, I can drag and drop freely from one to the other, as well, all within the same window on-screen.

(For example, I have found this an advantage when doing a remaster, where I can compare the stuff in the /tmp folders created by remaster with the actual folders that are part of the normal filesystem. This provided visual inspection and has been an enormous time-savior in my efforts to get my remasters right.)

And, there are other features that I have found useful and helpful that I do not get from the normal filemanagers (FM).

I'm not trying to push any FM over another. I am trying to bring awareness of a tool that might be useful should others wonder what those tools do to help us.

Here to help.

[Keef]

There is an older pet for Worker by Trapster. Even Lobster gave it a go.
The latest version is easy to compile though. Plenty of options to play with - fonts, colours, columns etc.

[Rattlehead]

If you like text mode, there is also Vifm. I used it for a long time but it lacked some pretty essential functions. At one point it made more sense to simply use Vim's navigator function -and that's as far as my geekery level has ever reached, I think --.

In the forum there is also a small project called RoxSet, which opens two parallel Rox windows, giving you the best of both worlds. But it is just a bash script that automates the opening of two Rox instances, and in my computer did not work that well. It would be nice to have a two headed Rox...

[Pelo]

EmelFM is worth to be known. downloaded from puppy Lucid PPM. EmelFM is nice and easy to use.
Thunar replaced on XFCE Slacko because boring, very boring !

[nancy reagan]

4pane manager

I think hosted by Scottman Akita's repo ? or through Ttuuxxx's Classic Pup ?

http://akita.scottjarvis.com/4pane-0.8.0-i386.pet

[gcmartin]

Anyone posting here of MultiPane FileManagers should post a link to any PETs which allow this feature. These are important to developers and users alike. I think most everyone understand the benefit(s).

I will update the opening post with such links to make the FileManagers/PETs easy to locate for community use.