Popularity does something with everything that we do in this world. It aims at pushing things either for the better or worse. In this chase, Dopus did something remarkable for the reputation of Amiga.
Including apps such as SnoopDos, Protracker, Dpaint, Lightwave, Scala, the games and the remarkable demoscene is what made Amiga popular back in the days. Dopus might not be the first file manager for the Amiga but it certainly put the Amiga on the map in 1990. Dopus was a huge tool that helped Amiga. It is still for Windows and Dopus Magellan is still developed for AmigaOS. It is not for everyone. I admit that, but it changed me on how I use and feel about AmigaOS. It made me stay with the Amiga and I know many other Amiga users do it too. Others love Linux, while that is not my thing. I respect its popularity though.
Read on why Dopus means so much to the popularity of Amiga then and now.
Directory Opus is Dopus
Dopus was introduced to the Amiga in January 1990 by Jonathan Potter through Inovatronics until he joined GPSoftware in 1994. No one at that time saw how big the importance that this file manager application for Amiga would do to Amiga’s reputation until today and beyond. Dopus entering the Amiga market is so essential to the history of Amiga’s popularity that the name is Amiga’s soul mate. Dopus is the Amigas guarding name-angel sort of like Dpaint is.
Jonathan did a remarkable thing back in the early years for the Amiga. GPSoftware tried to move what they did on the Amiga to Windows with Dopus Magellan in the later years but many Amiga users still use AmigaOS because of their love for the standalone Directory Opus 4 application… The complex Dopus Magellan file manager “transform” solution for AmigaOS and Windows is still popular today.
The not so known Dopus Magellan transformed the entire AmigaOS or Windows for the better as it improved the windows to become proper file lister windows. Ambient for MorphOS has also taken lots of ideas from Dopus Magellan.
Dopus started as a standalone file manager back in 1990
Jonathan from Australia changed the Amiga world forever. The very first version of Directory Opus was a standalone application in the beginning. This meant that the application opened itself on its own screen. With this application, you could do easier tasks with files. The name for Dopus is actually DOpus, but Dopus is also ok to say.
Directory Opus introduced easy handling of files between floppy and hard drive partitions. It was a revelation to AmigaOS and Jonathan managed to spread his application through the simplicity that it offers for the user. With Dopus, you can copy, move, extract and read files where the left and right areas can be either floppies or hard drive partitions. Today I also recommend using the Dopus type of file manager as it handles the mem card and USB mem pen support for AmigaOS. Using any sorts of mem cards with AmigaOS and a file manager is a good tip.
A file manager is as important today as it was
Using a file manager eases everything and in many cases, it is much easier to understand where you are going to copy or move files too. Yes, I am using a standalone file manager sometimes even on MorphOS or on my AmigaOS 3.1.4 with Dopus Magellan installed. The simplicity makes it genius to use. Today, however, if you use AmigaOS 1.x you need to use Directory Opus 4.12 as 4.16 and up requires AmigaOS 3.x or higher.
Once people use Dopus or any other file managers such as DiskMaster2, Filer, or RO. You will understand how genius it is for handling files and why it became an instant hit. This is one of the few applications that I really miss on Windows and macOS.
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