What Exactly is Dopus?

[Thorham]

It started out as a directory manager and slowly morphed into an operating system.

You mean a desktop replacement. Dopus isn't even remotely what you'd call an operating system. Desktop != operating system.

[Thorham]

Its a wrapper that sits on top of Workbench, adding functionality.

No, it's not. It's a file manager that can be used as a Workbench replacement. It doesn't wrap anything, and you don't have to use it that way. I've got mine set up to work like Dopus 4.

[Thorham]

Like another poster, I never could get comfortable with Dopus 5.x.  I believe it was billed as a Workbench replacement.

People keep saying that, but this is an optional mode. In fact...

Dopus 4.1x, is the classic DIR utility, an assistant to Workbench.

... you can configure it to be just that:

Dopus can bog down while reading really large directories.

That's probably Dopus4. It uses a crap sorting algorithm. Dopus5 is MUCH faster for large directories. It's actually the reason I switched from 4 to 5.