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GNU Midnight Commander

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Re: GNU Midnight Commander

#151
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in Russia, "orthodox" has an extra connotation that's not strictly coupled to church, akin more to "one true way", as in "orthodox way to learn a tech stack". With a negation, it becomes something like "wrong" or even "heretical", as in "pizza with pineapple".

The English word for that is "canonical".

To me, "canonical" feels more descriptive whereas "orthodox" has a prescriptive connotation. But I'm also ESL, so not sure if that's just me or common in any/all English-speaking countries.

Re: GNU Midnight Commander

#152
post #104

Midnight commander is a great tool, although I think most younger users do not realize that we lost something along the way. Norton Commander was fantastically fast for common file operations not just because of the dual-pane design, but because of several things working together. Thoughtful design of software while thinking of hardware. To get the most out of it, you were supposed to use the numpad on your keyboard.…

"select all files" was just one key: * (actually, it was invert selection -- so assuming no files were selected beforehand). Pressing + and Enter would select one file, then try to edit/run the next one?

Re: GNU Midnight Commander

#153

I love Midnight Commander so much; I install it on every system I use. It's so much more efficient/pleasant when in comes to navigating the filesystem and doing basic operations, especially when you learn the shortcuts and learn how to use it along with other command-line tools (hint: if you press Ctrl+O in MC it will switch to a normal shell command prompt it the directory you're in, and you can press Ctrl+O again t…

Same here. I wonder how much does it have to do with the fact that I came of age during the MS-DOS era. The design seems just so sleek and efficient to me.

Re: GNU Midnight Commander

#154

dual-pane file manager For some reason, the technical term for these is Orthodox File Manager , which I've always thought was an obscure cultural in-joke from the countries where these were most popular --- Eastern Europe and the former USSR. This origin is elaborated at length here: https://softpanorama.org/Articles/introduction_to_orthodox_f...

I'd say "Orthodox File Manager" is a forced meme by the author of the article. (Note that he links to his older article, etc.)

20-25 years ago when this kind of file managers were all the rage for power users I was in a Fidonet/Usenet discussion group with the most fanatical of these users, often sysadmins, plugin devs, etc. I don't think "orthodox" was used as a term - sometimes it was used as an epithet, maybe, sort of a joke.

But I guess Dr. Nikolai shows us that if you are really committed to introduced a term you can do it, eventually :D

Re: GNU Midnight Commander

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in Russia, "orthodox" has an extra connotation that's not strictly coupled to church, akin more to "one true way", as in "orthodox way to learn a tech stack". With a negation, it becomes something like "wrong" or even "heretical", as in "pizza with pineapple".

What you're describing is the meaning of the word in English. I suspect using the word православный with this meaning started as a joke transplanting the English meaning of the word onto the corresponding Russian word.

Actually, it's the meaning of the word in Greek:

> "what is regarded as true or correct," from Late Latin orthodoxus, from Greek orthodoxos "having the right opinion," from orthos "right, true, straight" + doxa "opinion, praise".

(https://www.etymonline.com/word/orthodox)

But, when referring to dual-pane file managers, it's probably a mix of both meanings ("one true way" and "old-fashioned").

Re: GNU Midnight Commander

#159
post #119
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use it especially when moving files around in my NAS and it is awesome. For GUI file managers, I have to say you can't get better than Dolphin. It has an integrated shell for the current directory, and you can split the view. It can also directly open ssh and SFTP URLs. For local things the combination of Dolphin and it's shell is unbeatable.

> you can't get better than Dolphin Try https://krusader.org >. Same KDE underpinnings, but orthodox interface.

I used Krusader for years, then (after installing Ubuntu instead of Kubuntu) I discovered Double Commander (https://github.com/doublecmd/doublecmd), which is also free software, but more cross-platform (and developed using Free Pascal/Lazarus, which makes it old-fashioned in even more ways - it even used to be hosted on SourceForge, but it looks like they moved to GitHub now).

Re: GNU Midnight Commander

#160
post #157

I tried to love mc, but its ergonomics felt slightly off. Maybe it's just hard to rewire my Norton / Volkov Commander / FAR Manager muscle memory, I don't know I ended up being on a Linux fork of Far Manager, which works beautifully: https://github.com/elfmz/far2l

While I use command line tools on Linux daily, using a console-based tool that pretends to be a GUI tool is a bridge too far, so I prefer GUI-based dual pane file managers like Double Commander or Krusader.

Of course mc and far can be used over an SSH connection, so they have their advantages too...

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