The top of the homepage says File Pilot was made from scratch (so I'd expect inherently less technical debt than something that's been around since the 90's). Comparing its screenshots to Directory Opus, it looks less cluttered, or at least slightly different. The interface looks like it adheres to the Windows 11 design style a little more, versus Directory Opus's screenshots looking like Windows 8-10.

If I used Windows regularly, I'd probably appreciate having another option, just as I appreciate (and even take for granted) the ability to switch between various options on Linux.

On the other hand, 35 years of cruft also represents 35 years of accumulated knowledge about what people want from a file manager. So one should not dismiss Directory Opus based upon a few screenshots.

Fresh blood is certainly a good thing though. I am just arguing that we should not dismiss something based upon its age or cosmetics.

(Directory Opus is one of the few things that I miss while using Linux.)

In addition to Directory Opus, I also miss https://www.xyplorer.com/ on Windows since I’m on Linux.

I prefer to use Win10 and probably move to Linux after that, so the interface doesn't match the rest of my OS. It's incredibly fast though.

But speaking of technical debts, I couldn't open a UNC path ( \\nas\share\ ). Opening a network share mounted to a drive letter worked fine though.

FP has been mostly tested and improved for mapped network drives, as the focus has been, and still is, on providing a very solid local experience.

Direct network access (and better integration with NAS) will be added in the near future.

I imagine it's because the UI may not be portable to Windows

Linux basically has a pile of dogpoo and now with wayland still blocking the ability to have dockable windows, good luck. Lol

I'm pretty happy with the kde file manager on wayland personally