[HN Gopher] Midnight Commander Tips and Tricks
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Midnight Commander Tips and Tricks
Author : ingve
Score : 119 points
Date : 2022-01-30 15:15 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.softpanorama.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.softpanorama.org)
| xaduha wrote:
| > If you use vi, Vifm gives you complete keyboard control over
| your files without having to learn a new set of commands
|
| https://vifm.info
| philonoist wrote:
| There is only one true god, an 800MB beast - Total Commander
| Ultima Prime[0]
|
| [0]https://www.tcup.pl/forum/showthread.php?tid=3125
| papito wrote:
| Midnight Commander is such a great name for a dirty flick.
| thom wrote:
| I can't think of another tool which evokes the same level of
| recursive nostalgia as Midnight Command. Firstly, that it was the
| environment I spent most of my forays into Linux inside. And
| secondly, that I only fell in love with it because of Norton
| Commander in DOS (one of the main uses for which was setting up a
| parallel cable connection to my brother's PC to play DOOM
| together).
| BeetleB wrote:
| I made a Midnight Commander Guide (as a presentation) years ago:
|
| http://blog.nawaz.org/posts/2012/Dec/a-guide-to-midnight-com...
|
| And yes, definitely FAR Manager on Windows!
| shdon wrote:
| The actual Midnight Commander Guide PDF link leads to a
| "repository not found" page on Bitbucket. Archive.org still has
| a single copy, dated December 2014.
| BeetleB wrote:
| Yes - Bitbucket killed it and I didn't bother moving to
| another repository.
| knight17 wrote:
| Thank you, archive.org: http://web.archive.org/web/2014122610
| 2123/https://bitbucket....
| canistel wrote:
| I do have mc installed, but Double Commander remains the first
| choice owing to:-
|
| - Tabs
|
| - Multi-file rename
| npteljes wrote:
| I also love Double Commander for its "synchronize"
| functionality. And the fact that I can't be arsed to use a
| text-based interface in a graphical environment. In terminals,
| of course, mc is the jam.
| themodelplumber wrote:
| Double Commander is really nice, a favorite for sure.
| karlicoss wrote:
| For multi-file rename, vidir is excellent
| https://linux.die.net/man/1/vidir
| canistel wrote:
| Thanks for suggesting this tool. Didn't know about it until
| now. From what I have read, sounds like a powerful tool and I
| would be trying it out.
| cassepipe wrote:
| """ You need to take some steps to make MC to exit in the current
| directory visible on the screen. One way is to use alias such as
|
| alias mc='mc -P "/tmp/mc-$USER/mc.pwd.$$"; cd `cat
| /tmp/mc-$USER/mc.pwd.$$`; rm /tmp/mc-$USER/*'
|
| The other is to use a supplied with mc more generic script
|
| alias mc='. /usr/libexec/mc/mc-wrapper.sh'
|
| One of the most common problems with mc is incorrect display of
| pseudo-graphical characters, which spoils borders on the panels
| and while this defect does not affect functionality, is very
| unpleasant aesthetically. See Midnight commander does not display
| pseudo-graphic characters properly for more information. You can
| use option -a to use regular characters instead and in most cases
| this is an adequate solution. """
|
| Hell, no. I am glad I learned vim and I am still using it a lot
| but I am not going down another rabbit hole where easy and simple
| things are ... contorted. And I don't want to take care about
| another configuration file in order to feel at home. I just want
| sane defaults, simple things made easy and complex task possible.
| What I like about vim is that the modal editing paradigm. All the
| rest could be better and whenever Neovim or Helix or Amp or
| Onivim or any other terminal editor/ide is 1.0, I'll jump ship.
| Navigating files with the command line is not that complicated
| imho.
|
| I don't blame Vim, maybe it was not meant to be an IDE. Maybe we
| need a terminal IDE.
| unilynx wrote:
| You don't _need_ to set up that alias. I 'm guessing it's a
| holdover from the DOS days with Norton commander where you
| would launch nc just to quickly navigate to a directory and
| then quit it, which can't easily be done on Unix.
|
| (the current drive/directory was global state in DOS - it even
| recorded the current directory per drive, but that may only
| have been command.com doing that)
| tinus_hn wrote:
| Note that this kind of scripts is a security issue if the
| system does not implement per-user tmp directories, especially
| if it regularly cleans the /tmp directory. Which this script
| appears to expect.
| throwaway5371 wrote:
| The regression from Windows Explorer and OSX Finder to Midnight
| Commander is absolutely amazing.
|
| We have only gone backwards, in all aspects, from performance to
| usability.
| mariusmg wrote:
| DOS Navigator baby !!!
| akoster wrote:
| Muxe's fork is still alive and kicking!
| http://www.ndn.muxe.com/
| deepspace wrote:
| I don't understand your comment. Midnight Commander is not a
| new tool. It is based on Norton Commander, which precedes the
| tools you mention by years.
| johnwalkr wrote:
| Parent means regression from MC to windows explorer and MacOS
| finder. I agree, both have added tabs in recent years but I
| miss the dual directory view in MC. And for that matter, in
| many tools from about 20 years ago.
| throwaway5371 wrote:
| do you think Finder is better than mc/nc?
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| I have convinced my wife that Midnight Commander is an excellent
| name for our future black cat.
| themodelplumber wrote:
| That's awesome. Plus you could chill late at night and listen
| to Norton Commander together.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmVeQEysvtk
| Villodre wrote:
| MC always brings a lot of nostalgia and the though that I used to
| be _extremely_ productive with it. Surely it 's just a mirage of
| my memory and it's just I don't perform so many file managing
| actions anymore, but I remember not even bothering with Windows
| Explorer until at least XP.
| drummojg wrote:
| It's been a minute since I've thought about mc--which is the
| point, I reckon.
| ratsmack wrote:
| The number of stale links on that page is kind of sad.
| blackfawn wrote:
| The article mentions it, but my favorite mc option is enabling
| lynx-like motion. Being able to left/right arrow in and out of
| directories is so convenient!
| every wrote:
| Lynx itself is a modest fm. It has a host of editing and
| file/directory commands. The first entry in my lynx menu is ~/
| entropie wrote:
| When I learned linux and dug deeper into programming mcedit was
| my tool of choice and I used it a fairly bit until I discovered
| emacs and took some very painfull and time consuming approaches
| to get into emacs. (Partly I was offline and the nature of a self
| documenting OS and text editor was novel for me and so
| enlightening.
|
| Later I tried to get better and standard terminal stuff and
| abandoned mc from my system so i couldnt cheat around. These day,
| my GF uses mc sometimes to get very basic things done.
| aratob wrote:
| Speaking about 2-paneled file managers, I'm still a fan of Far
| Manager on Windows.
| ant6n wrote:
| Total Commander all the way
| unixhero wrote:
| Nothing ever comes close... Welp only Double Commander, the
| gpl reimplementation :)
| oblio wrote:
| 29 years old and still going :-)
| CyberShadow wrote:
| I remember this holy war. :)
|
| I think Far Manager wins in extensibility and being FOSS, and
| Windows/Total Commander wins in out-of-the-box utility.
| DenisM wrote:
| Now also on MacOS and Linux
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far_Manager#Linux_and_MacOS_ve...
| pmoriarty wrote:
| I like MultiCommander[1], which I've been using for many years,
| because it's quite feature rich.
|
| It would be great if there were some in-depth, feature-by-
| feature comparisons of all these two-pane file managers.
|
| [1] - http://multicommander.com
| anothermindbomb wrote:
| I never used pc clones when I was a kid. It was an Amiga for me,
| and in my world Directory Opus was king. It still is on my
| windows pcs these days. Great software and still actively
| developed.
|
| Come to think of it, I no longer recall what Windows Explorer
| actually looks like.
| TomDavey wrote:
| Yes, Directory Opus is outstanding. I'm an Emacs fanboy to an
| intense degree, but I've never bothered to learn Dired.
| Directory Opus, although mouse-driven, is simply too powerful.
|
| What is this Windows Explorer of which you speak?
| lordgrenville wrote:
| Ha, I'm the opposite - not a hardcore Emacs user but I use
| dired whenever I can. wdired-mode is such an intuitive way to
| do bulk renaming.
| sandreas wrote:
| Alternatives for terminal are:
|
| lf (https://github.com/gokcehan/lf)
|
| nnn (https://github.com/jarun/nnn)
|
| lfm (https://github.com/langner/lfm)
|
| vifm (https://vifm.info/)
|
| ranger (https://github.com/ranger/ranger)
|
| With UI (cross platform):
|
| muCommander (https://www.mucommander.com/)
|
| DoubleCommander (https://doublecmd.sourceforge.io/)
|
| fman (https://fman.io/)
|
| Camelot (https://github.com/IngvarX/Camelot)
|
| I prefer lf and muCommander (only for simple ops, though), for
| sync and resumable copy I use rsync and rclone.
| CyberShadow wrote:
| Any suggestions for good performance and extensibility? I've
| tried a few but kept coming back to Midnight Commander for
| performance/stability and VFS support.
| arminiusreturns wrote:
| Ranger and Emacs dired are my goto's, but I'm not sure about
| fuzzy file searching, since I archaicly still manually _find_
| for stuff.
| unwind wrote:
| If GTK is acceptable, maybe try gentoo [1]. It's not very
| well maintained "lately", but performance used to be a goal
| and it sure has a lot of settings.
|
| Disclosaroo: I wrote it.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentoo_(file_manager)
| karlicoss wrote:
| wondering, what do you miss in mc that you look for
| alternatives? (not saying mc is complete, just curious!)
| 149764 wrote:
| Fuzzy file search, the current ctrl-s implementation
| doesn't quite do it for me. It would also be nice to have a
| shortcut, that filters current directory.
| sandreas wrote:
| I did not look for alternatives, but in some of the good
| old linux resources sometimes super new and fancy file
| managers come up and I took notes on these, because I
| always planned to develop my own file manager with terminal
| UI...
|
| Especially vim shortcuts are often a thing - I personally
| like single file binaries that are portable, have sane
| defaults and easy to setup without root permissions (like
| lf).
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(page generated 2022-01-30 23:00 UTC)