xtgold?
You might be interested in YTree (https://www.han.de/~werner/ytree.html), UnixTree (https://www.unixtree.org/), or linuXtree (https://stahlke.org/dan/lxt/).
GNU Midnight Commander
71–80 of 317 posts
Re: GNU Midnight Commander
#72dual-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...
They were popular because there was no Unix culture in Eastern Europe at the time. Pretty much any computer geek was a DOS user. To me personally, it always seemed kind of lame because many of these people would not bother to properly learn the shell language.
Re: GNU Midnight Commander
#73I never used MC (not very much into TUIs) but ages ago I wrote a graphical file manager in the same vein. For me the inspiration came from Directory Opus [1] on the Amiga, which was just awesome.
When GTK+ was released in the late 90s, combining my love of C programming with a newfound home in Linux and GTK+'s ability to make complicated graphical interfaces resulted in a dual-pane file manager. It was a great project.
Re: GNU Midnight Commander
#74We all know it’s a clone of the Norton commander.
Re: GNU Midnight Commander
#75`mc` was a gateway drug for me to switch from DOS to Linux in 1995. Because I hadn't been gotten comfortable with other text editors and file management commands yet, mc and its own text editor (mc -e) had felt very intuitive at the time. I felt at home. I was also amazed by stuff like FTP VFS support. It was so complete and done right.
Re: GNU Midnight Commander
#76I have been using mc for almost 30 years, and the original Norton Commander as a kid before that!
Pleasantly surprised to see this topping HN today, and even more than the project and its website are still maintained in 2025.
Re: GNU Midnight Commander
#77I never could use mc. None of the keyboard shortcuts were at all intuitive to me, who had been using many different GUI file managers over the decades. Which is a shame, because I use SSH a LOT and doing normal file housework via pure CLI is super tedious and error-prone... Fortunately, I went looking more recently, and found the nnn file manager, which works properly with the basic keyboard commands I would expect,…
> None of the keyboard shortcuts were at all intuitive to me
They're exactly the same as Norton Commander had been since the 80s.
Re: GNU Midnight Commander
#78In a restricted environment like a console only system these two pane file managers are very useful. I was a heavy user of norton commander (nc) back in my DOS days. Also these are useful on mobile.
However I rarely use them on a graphical environment like windows where I can open arbitrary explorer windows and arrange them as I see like. I guess it depends on what people have experience on...
Re: GNU Midnight Commander
#79dual-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...
The "orthodox" comes from a specific type of GUI, namely one that is driven by commands under the hood. UI elements are merely used to trigger commands that have the actual effect, and these commands could just as well be executed by hand, or automated into more complex commands. This is an excellent way to build powerful UIs. It is what drives things like Vim, and often why Lisp-based software is so hackable -- thin…
Does Blender also qualify? It even shows you the name of the Python function behind each UI element on hover, which is great for discoverability when scripting. Or maybe it used to, can't see it now.
Re: GNU Midnight Commander
#80Fun fact, on Windows I stopped using File Explorer and use Midnight Commander. Now that I am more into the command line, I may need to give it a try.
Fun fact (???) wayback about 40 years ago Central Point Software was humiliating Microsoft with its suites of utilities for Microsoft's OS's, which included file managers for Windows (and MS-DOS IIRC), and was a top rated #1 best seller. Microsoft graciously offered to buy a license for said software from Central Point, which they would make a standard part of windows. This was the kind of deal that practical realists tend to accept, even though it spells DOOM with a capital 3-finger salute. 'Tis great to see something as versatile as the wheel and axle or the Oklahoma speed wrench still rolling along.