Personally, I tend to stuff my most used apps into my file manager, so I never have to leave the file manager. Now I’ve been a fan of Directory Opus since the Amiga days, but this program is only available for Windows.

Since I’m also moving away from Windows, but don’t want to be without a dual file manager, DoubleCommander suddenly becomes very interesting. For work, I run about 50 Linux servers (non-GUI) and yes, Midnight Commander is a very welcome solution on such machines.

But if you’ve been familiar with Directory Opus for years, MC is still very primitive. It’s a lot better than nothing, don’t get me wrong.

But if you could cram the same tools into the Linux version of DoubleCommander as you do in the Windows version, it would make switching to Linux a lot easier. Since the file manager’s interface is basically the same, and if the tools are as well, the workflow will remain almost the same.

I witnessed this a few years ago. The vast majority of tools I use in Windows were already available directly in Linux and I’ve been working with Pop!_OS (version 20.04) for a year with complete satisfaction. The only thing I didn’t like here is the file manager. Now I’m also not happy with the functionality of Windows Explorer, that’s for sure.

To be fair, the Pop!_OS file manager isn’t much different from Windows Explorer when it comes to functions and how to interact with them. However, I am very disappointed in the functionality and ways of doing things. Directory Opus was actually able to do a lot more things in the version of Windows released in 2005 than the current Windows Explorer can do in 2024.

Directory Opus via Wine can be considered “works” in Linux, but it is a very unpleasant experience. So, if DoubleCommander supports the same configuration as the native Linux application, you should get used to DC and then port it to Linux to continue working there happily.

Nowadays, I hardly play games anymore, and I’m lucky that almost all the tools I use are also available directly in Linux. This won’t be the case for everyone, but I would be very happy if this worked out. My previous stint in Linux was completely free of the Microsoft bullshit, the ensuing reboots, and the ever-increasing pile of MS propaganda on your screen, plus begging for more MS subscriptions. That was really a relief.