Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

GNU Midnight Commander

midnight-commander.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 317 posts

Re: GNU Midnight Commander

#261

Post by dwaaa »

I need: * grubvox colors ;) * half vertical size of screen (similar norton commander) I can type instructions and see output * default change directory when leave a 'mc'. * better way to change default program (for example image)

Re: GNU Midnight Commander

#262

Post by cb321 »

amelius wrote: post #203
jcynix wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean something like print -rl -- *(om[1].) in zsh?

No, I mean globally (over all directories, starting from my home directory). And of course, if the latest file isn't what I wanted, then it should be possible to easily go to the latest file before that.

It's 10x slower than a more specialized command [1] for me, but adding recursion only requires adding one extra asterisk (`**` instead of `*`) and maybe a D if you want to include dot files or triple star if you want to follow symlinks:

    $ date; print -rl -- **(om[1].D);date; newest -n4 -r0 $HOME
    Wed Sep 17 12:48:53 EDT 2025
    .config/mozilla/firefox/p9/bounce-tracking-protection.sqlite
    Wed Sep 17 12:49:25 EDT 2025
    /u/p9/.config/mozilla/firefox/p9/permissions.sqlite
    /u/p9/.config/zsh/history
    /u/p9/.config/mozilla/firefox/p9/places.sqlite-wal
    /u/p9/.config/mozilla/firefox/p9/bounce-tracking-protection.sqlite
    *newest -n4 -r0 $HOME
     Time: 1.882365 (u) + 1.318166 (s)=3.215131 (99%) mxRSS 139 MiB
Not sure how to change to get most recent 4 or whatever in the Zsh style (since, you know, that'd be 10x slower..)

[1] https://github.com/c-blake/bu/blob/main/doc/newest.md*

Re: GNU Midnight Commander

#264

Post by xyzelement »

Anytime I see this stuff, I get nostalgic for Norton Commander (it was HUGE in the USSR when I was a kid learning computers in the late 80s and early 90s)

But somehow the reality of how I - and I think most people - use computers today is very different. I don't find myself navigating a shallow directory hierarchy and making file operations too often. A part of it is that all the stuff is in the cloud or at least connected to applications (eg: I am more likely to navigate my coding projects from an IDE than from Shell/MC)

And when I administer eg my home linux system, it seems more likely that I jump to a random far-away directory or edit a specific file, rather than navigating the filesystem MC stye.

I am curious how people are using computers today that MC-like interface is still most suitable.

Re: GNU Midnight Commander

#265

Post by forgotmypw17 »

xyzelement wrote: post #264

Anytime I see this stuff, I get nostalgic for Norton Commander (it was HUGE in the USSR when I was a kid learning computers in the late 80s and early 90s) But somehow the reality of how I - and I think most people - use computers today is very different. I don't find myself navigating a shallow directory hierarchy and making file operations too often. A part of it is that all the stuff is in the cloud or at least con…

I use Total Commander on Windows all the time. It is much better than Explorer at so many things, such as:

- Actually letting you navigate the directory structure.

- Making WSL volumes easy to work with.

- Keyboard accessibility.

- Dealing with many tabs and bookmarks.

- A stable interface that doesn't randomly change without my consent.

- Many other things I'll omit for time reasons.

Re: GNU Midnight Commander

#266

Post by hiccuphippo »

reaperducer wrote: post #243
unixhero wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Midnight Commander is available under Brew. https://brew.sh/ The command to install it is: brew install mc

The command to install it is: brew install mc The Midnight Commander web site says to use % brew install midnight-commander

mc is an alias to it.

Re: GNU Midnight Commander

#267

Post by bigwheels »

homebrewer wrote: post #167
pimeys wrote: 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.

I'm partial to pcmanfm-qt, which also supports splits, and has the best "search in current directory" I've seen anywhere. You open a directory, start typing, and it filters out matching files fzf-style. It doesn't simply select them like some other file managers do, it searches within the name and not just the prefix (again, like some other file managers), you don't have to press anything beforehand. When you get use…

Wish there was a screenshot of the final product in this repo! QT apps are non-trivial to build if you don't already have the environment setup.

BTW, do you know if it can build for macOS, or is that a non-starter?

Re: GNU Midnight Commander

#269

Post by vzaliva »

Tell me you are from USSR without telling me :) Also tell me you are super-conservative, clinging to ossifed replica of a tool from 1986.

P.S. Compare to some other tools from old times, e.g. `vi`. It was wastly modernized as `vim` and still actively developed with new features added.

Re: GNU Midnight Commander

#270

Post by 0x457 »

xyzelement wrote: post #264

Anytime I see this stuff, I get nostalgic for Norton Commander (it was HUGE in the USSR when I was a kid learning computers in the late 80s and early 90s) But somehow the reality of how I - and I think most people - use computers today is very different. I don't find myself navigating a shallow directory hierarchy and making file operations too often. A part of it is that all the stuff is in the cloud or at least con…

I remember a time when FAR was one of the first things I install on Windows.
Post reply on HN