SallyAbout
A file manager with a long history
Sally continues a Windows file manager that has been in daily use since 1997. It keeps what people liked about it and brings it to current Windows.
From Servant Salamander to Sally
| Year | |
|---|---|
| 1997 | Petr Šolín writes Servant Salamander during his studies at the Czech Technical University and releases it as freeware. The name was a reply to the file managers of the time, Norton Commander and Windows Commander: a file manager should serve, not command. |
| 2001 | Petr Šolín and Jan Ryšavý, now running the company Altap, release the first shareware version. |
| 2007 | The program becomes Altap Salamander 2.5. Many programmers and translators contribute over the following years. |
| 2019 | Altap is acquired by Fine, and Altap Salamander 4.0 becomes freeware. |
| 2023 | The source is released under the GNU GPL as Open Salamander 5.0. |
| 2025 | Sally starts as an independent fork of Open Salamander, maintained by Elias Bachaalany, with the first releases in 2026. |
What Sally changes
Open Salamander was a 2000s Windows program: ANSI file names, paths limited to 260 characters, a light-only interface and Internet Explorer-based viewing. Sally's work so far has gone into:
- Unicode file names and 32,767-character paths throughout the program;
- safer file operations and Find results that cannot hit the wrong file;
- light, dark and system themes;
- Windows Terminal integration and more icon overlays;
- a WebView2 viewer with Markdown, and Unicode text decoding;
- native x64, x86 and ARM64 builds, Wine compatibility, and a modern CMake build;
- maintained translations, a public release pipeline and regression tests for every fixed issue.
Development is AI-assisted: AI helps with modernization, tests, translations and release work, while the project stays open source and driven by its users' reports.
People
Elias Bachaalany (0xeb) leads and develops Sally. Translators and contributors are credited in AUTHORS, along with the people who report problems, test pre-release builds and confirm fixes. Much of Sally's progress started with a precise bug report.
Sally is built on the work of the Open Salamander authors, listed in doc/AUTHORS, and exists because Fine released Open Salamander as open source. The original authors are not responsible for Sally and do not support it.
License
Sally is free software: you can use, study, share and change it under the GNU General Public License version 2 or later. Some bundled components have their own compatible licenses, listed in third_party.txt. Site licenses covers this website.
Support the project
A GitHub star helps others find Sally. Donations through PayPal or Buy Me a Coffee pay for development time. How you can help lists every way to support Sally.