By implementing three additional types of virtual file systems (VFS): XTree, Briefcase and list-based, DN launched a new generation of OFMs.

[2] The initial version of DN I (v 0.90) was released in 1991, and written by Stefan Tanurkov, Andrew Zabolotny and Sergey Melnik (all from Chișinău, Moldova).

In 1993, Slava Filimonov invited Stefan to join him to continue producing and publishing DN with joint efforts.

In late 1999, Ritlabs decided to make version 1.51 of the DOS Navigator completely free with freely available source code.

The cross-platform version, DN OSP, in turn, is tied to the Virtual Pascal compiler and runtime library, which are no longer supported.