Microsoft Open-Sources Original File Manager From the 1990s So It Can Run On Windows 10 (theverge.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Microsoft is releasing the source code for its original Windows File Manager from nearly 28 years ago. Originally released for Windows 3.0, the File Manager was a replacement for managing files through MS-DOS, and allowed Windows users to copy, move, delete, and search for files. While it's a relic from the past, you can still compile the source code Microsoft has released and run the app on Windows 10 today. The source code is available on GitHub, and is maintained by Microsoft veteran Craig Wittenberg under the MIT license. Wittenberg copied the File Manager code from Windows NT 4 back in 2007, and has been maintaining it before open sourcing it recently. It's a testament to the backward compatibility of Windows itself, especially that this was originally included in Windows more than 20 years ago.

Comments

Still not better than Norton Commander

[bigmacx]

...THE reference file management tool for PC geeks

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norton_Commander

I still use Midnight Commander on Linux from time to time, especially for quick side-by-side file/dir moves (the viewing of diff's between them is nice) and searching for content inside lots of files

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight_Commander

Re:Still not better than Norton Commander

[Anonymous Coward]

XTree Gold was much better

Re:Port to iOS please

[jenningsthecat]

Please!!!

I wish they'd release the source for the file manager that came with Win98 and Win2K, and I wish somebody would port it to Linux. The only decent Linux file manager I've found is Dolphin, and its deps are pretty much all of KDE core, which is huge - especially when compared with the XFCE environment I'd be using it in. I want a file manager with an integrated search function that will actually search inside files for a specified text string. Right now I use the Gnome search tool. It isn't integrated into the file manager, it's buggy, and its UI sucks, but it's the best available, short of installing the bloated and bling-laden KDE. Pretty much the only thing I miss about Windows is the File Manager. Well, except for the fact that Windows applications use File Manager for their load and save functions, which makes the interface much more consistent from one application to the next. Having a mix of GTK2, GTK3, and program-specific file dialogs like those in Libre Office, is just sucky.

Re:Port to iOS please

[rogoshen1]

i never understood why windows defaults to "hide extensions for known file types" -- in what god damn universe is that a GOOD idea?

Re:Longevity of code/interface

[DamnOregonian]

The fucking fuck?

There is an obscene amount of POSIX compliant code that breaks without 64-bit specific fixes. I know because I have to fix it at work.

And don't get me started on DLL - possibly the worst design decision in all of Windows (and that's saying a lot!), particularly given how DLLs proved to be a massive attack vector on Windows systems.

Yes, dynamic libraries were such a bad idea.
Increased attack surface? ya, youbetcha. Trade-off? You try running 150 processes on a machine with full software stacks without sharing memory pages, and let me know how that works for you. I've done my share of hackery with linux shared objects too. There was always a trade-off in them, and Microsoft neither invented that tradeoff, or had a worse implementation of it than anyone else. They're simply the most visible.

Re: Port to iOS please

[Bert64]

Pre-OSX MacOS didn't use file extensions at all... The filesystem used a separate metadata fork to determine file type, and wasn't reliant on something as arbitrary as the file name.

For a system which depends upon and makes decisions based upon the file extension, hiding them is stupid, and for a system that makes no use of the file extensions hiding them (if even present at all) is irrelevant.