John Socha started work on Norton Commander in 1984; at the time, he called it "Visual DOS" or "VDOS".

Symantec released Norton Commander 5.51 to support long filenames using the standard Windows APIs.

In order to preserve LFNs while working in real mode, Norton Commander 5.51 required the use of a terminate-and-stay-resident (TSR) utility.

Norton Commander did not have native support for LFNs in real mode and would truncate them.

According to former Peter Norton Group developer Mark Lawler, after Symantec had acquired Peter Norton Computing, Symantec had speculated Microsoft Windows would be a success, so the key PNC resources had been diverted, while new programmers for the Windows platform were hired.

This version fully integrated with Windows features such as the Recycle Bin and Quick View.

In June 1993, Symantec lowered the price of Norton Commander for OS/2 to $49, and soon ceased sales.

[4] There are many programs that follow the style of Norton Commander as created by John Socha.