Altap Salamander
A file-manager that was originally forced on me, but which I’ve come to rely upon for my daily work.
About ten years ago, I was hired by Oceaneering for a world-wide roll-out of an imaging and support project. I won’t mention the name of the manager who hired me, because, well, we ended up having a problem. As it turns out, he didn’t want to take on the project. What’s more, he wasn’t big on hiring guys “like me”, who had certifications and so on, but he was forced to do just that by the same CIO who thrust the desktop imaging project on that manager. The CIO, from what I understand from third-party sources, has since “retired”. I don’t know if the ill-fated project ever was completed because both of the people originally assigned to it, including me, were encouraged to “find other opportunities to excel”. Internal politics aside, I mostly blame my divorce for costing me that job. It turned out okay, though, since I landed at Seatrax shortly thereafter and have been quite successful there.
The other good thing to come out of that mess was that manager forcing us all to use a program called, at the time, “Servant Salamander”. As you can see from the thumbnail included on this post, it’s a file manager. But, it’s more than just that.
There’s a lot of history with this utility. Some of my readers may be familiar with the old Norton Commander, which inspired Petr Šolín to make the earliest version of Servant Salamander as freeware. Or, they may be more familiar with the text-menu-based utility for Linux called “Midnight Commander” which is sometimes just referred to as “MC”, since the name of the actual command is “mc”. This tool looks almost identical to Altap Salamander and if you’re used to Linux systems, running Salamander may make the transition a little easier.
Of course, the basics are there. The side-by-side default view of two directories lets you easily copy or move files from one directory to the other via a quick series of clicks to select files and either hitting the F5 or F6 key respectively. You can also use the context-sensitive menu to rename and delete files or directories, create directories, edit files or use the built-in viewer to preview files, all with the touch of a function key. You can also connect a network drive, if you happen to have a local fileserver of some kind with available shared directories.
In fact, while there are menus, virtually every command can be accomplished via a series of keystrokes or a combination of keys. For instance, while I usually use the mouse to navigate directories, a simple shift+F7 will bring up a dialog where I can type my desired destination directory. Or, I can do a search with a quick Alt+F7. (And, the search function built into Salamander is quite good, if you need to find something. At least as good as the built-in Windows search!)
But, what really makes this utility shine are all the extras.
For instance, sometimes, I have to deal with a lot of files in big directories that need to be synchronized between servers. Salamander has a built-in function to compare directories. It will even compare subdirectories, if it comes to that. As someone who manages multiple websites, the FTP plugin for Salamander, which allows me to quickly connect to a remote server and then navigate it like any other directory, has been such a time saver and is so convenient for me, it may be the main reason I have continued to use Salamander! I can even maintain a list of regular FTP sites so I can simply select them almost like I would change to any other drive on my system. And, yes, once connected, I can transfer files back and forth with the same commands as I do on local drives. (Though, I have to admit, every time I install Salamander on a new computer, I forget to set the default options for the FTP plugin to “Use passive transfer mode”, which seems to be the standard for all the FTP servers I connect to on a regular basis.)
Another plugin lets me view ISO CD or DVD disk images, which can be very helpful when you’re a system administrator and trying to retrieve a single file from an ISO downloaded from a vendor. And still others do everything from opening compressed archives to comparing files to copying entire disks. Further, if you managed both Windows and Linux servers, as I have, the WinSCP plugin makes it much easier to transfer files to a Linux host securely, though, at the moment, there’s not a 64-bit plugin, just a 32-bit version. Again, all very handy things to be able to do, especially for an IT professional!
While there is a free, trial version of Altap Salamander, after having used the licensed version, I really prefer that and recommend that you spend the money on it. As of this writing, if you get the latest version, along with all the plugins, only some of which cost extra, it will run €44.80, or about $63, for a single license. And, that will give you access to a year’s worth of updates. That may seem like a lot, but, trust me, the extras are all worth it and Petr updates it quite frequently.
Personally, I don’t know how I would make it through my day without using Altap Salamander!
