I find myself downloading DOpus 12. I've been with you a long time. I had an Amiga, back-in-the-day. But I won't be upgrading to win11. That's a little over a year away. You don't seem to have Linux (or, really, my preferred FreeBSD) ... so while your new version looks cool... in less than a year I won't be using it.
So ... it's not you, it's me. Unless you want to support FreeBSD :).
I feel like DOpus is such a mature program, that at this point, it probably would be very difficult to get it working on Linux aside from using Wine or Proton or whatever.
It seems like it would be a huge task that a dedicated team of people would have to undertake. It might be a willpower thing. What incentive does this company have to take part in such a massive project, ultimately to bring a closed source application to the Linux ecosystem, where it would likely face tons of ridicule for not being an open source, free project? The sheer enormity of supporting all of the various Linux OS's and handling each and every single one of their quirks seems like a daunting task that wouldn't amount to a significant enough return on investment to make the entire venture worthwhile.
Things are improving all of the time with FlatPaks, but that doesn't seem to satisfy all situations. Not only that but, programs like NordVPN claim to support Linux, but getting it working on Steam OS which is Arch Linux requires following some tedious, strange instructions. If a big company like NordVPN can't even properly support installing applications easily on Linux without inputting a strange list of terminal commands, then what hope does a small one have?
If you want my HONEST opinion, Linux file managers like Dolphin, Nautilus, or Krusader should stop trying to appeal to 3 year olds in terms of simplicity, and start thinking about implementing actual real features. I really mean that. These file managers are so simplistic looking, and do so little that it shocks me. It's 2024, these file managers have had decades to improve and yet they've stagnated more than Internet Explorer 6. It seems like their idea of improving things is polishing with a dry tissue, metaphorically speaking of course.
Bare in mind, I am not an expert on anything, and these are my opinions and I could be completely wrong about things. So take what I say with a grain of salt.
Totally agree, only think you should mention Krusader honourably.
"It [does not] provide[s] all the file management features you could possibly want."
It is neither a competitor nor a replacement for DOpus, not by a long shot, but it is the closest thing to it. It has a wealth of useful basic and advanced features that really make life on Linux easy, and when I can't stand running Windows anymore, it will be all I have left.
You name it! o)
Yes, Krusader is probably one of the better ones, but its GUI is very limited, as it supports only dual vertical mode and no preview pane or something like that at all (it has an external previewer, which is quite dumb and does not reflect any focus shift in the actual file display).
This is xnView MP, an image viewer, it comes closest to what I expect in terms of GUI, it has quite some nice features, but it is centered around images only, and does not do much with regular files and documents. It has color coded files, ratings, some useful columns and a preview pane built in, which is a start! o) It's a one man project though and closed source as well. No huge feature upgrade to be expected here.
What about if we all get an account at Krusaders code repository or something and open a zillion tickets over there and everyone here in need for a Linux DO alternative, is simply adding a "+1" into every ticket? That might leave an impression.. o)
Personally for me, the Linux/BSD world's lack of a decent file manager is one of the reasons I never made the switch. It feels like every time they make some progress it gets forked and it's back to square one. It's 2024 and I don't want to do everything in a terminal with escape sequences and grep.
The thing is, you just can't do "everything". The command line surely is fine for a lot of things, but not when sorting/previewing images or pdfs or whatever document e.g..
I recently did some research on how much effort it would take to start a basic file manager from scratch. Just some basic thing which has..
I ended up with Python and Qt v6 (PySide6) and had some performance tests so far. It is no way near as fast as DO is, but a Python based file manager would make script integration much easier. The performance for a 3000 item file display is okay on my 10 year old machine. Coding a file manager from scratch is obviously an insane task and not something I can do on my own. I would maybe stick to creating a skeleton of some kind. A flexible GUI skeleton which allows to put some buttons and toolbars in there. I think that could work for me when doing basic previewing of things. If I need to sync a folder or run a search, I would launch existing external solutions from there. My prototype "already" runs on Linux and actually feels faster than launching it on Windows.
Coding with Qt GUI framework is unexpectedly complex though, I don't get why that is. I guess Leo and Jon deal with an equally complex framework ==> endless respect for what is integrated and customized on the file display alone. o))
The Qt based GUI framework:
You can't expect current developers of Thunar, Dolphin, Nemo and whatever to learn their project new tricks. Even simple things like switching vertical/horizontal mode is called "niche" and won't be done. The Dolphin developers at least admit that their baby is not meant for professionals (like "Jeff"), read this:
Unfortunately, they don't tell you what "Jeff" is meant to use as his file manager..
Yes. Particularly regarding the level of responsiveness and smoothness exhibited, including dark mode.
