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Use Midnight Commander like a pro (2015)

klimer.eu

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Re: Use Midnight Commander like a pro (2015)

#81

there is a newcomer into the terminal file managers arena that looks like it's going to be what I was looking for https://github.com/sxyazi/yazi (sort of ranger/vifm written in rust, lots of momentum)

Hm. That sixel support does look really nice. It’s something I miss with vifm.

I had a project of baking in sixel support into nnn, but got too busy with other things :(

Re: Use Midnight Commander like a pro (2015)

#82
I always felt sort of embarassed that I use mc 24/7 for everything. I live in it. It might as well be my login shell. I even use mcedit for about 80% of text editing outside of geany or codeblocks.

I don't have any actual reason to be embarassed, since I'm actually perfectly comfortable in vi and and the command line on some old sco box without mc available, it's got to be just because I started among guys who themselves were even older unix guys who never touched anything like mc. Also it felt kind of like still using training wheels when I had been using xtree on dos before encountering unix. But hell I started on xenix myself and still miss some features from ksh93 vs the latest bash5. I haven't needed to live up to anyone else since forever.

But embarrassed or not, I used it all day every day since the late 90's at work and home. It just makes the most sense to be using essentially a browser for that.

For one thing I simply see more stuff.

In the past, every day at work I'd see random junk left all over the place by other employees who clearly didn't even know that they had created these junk files and directories all over the place from having flubbed the syntax of command lines, or botched quoting or escaping inside programs they were writing. Files with names that looked like various other bits of command syntax from quoting mistakes etc. And still sitting there because if you don't actively ls, then you don't see it. I was constantly cleaning up stuff like that back before we finally went to individual developer vms.

Re: Use Midnight Commander like a pro (2015)

#83

I always felt sort of embarassed that I use mc 24/7 for everything. I live in it. It might as well be my login shell. I even use mcedit for about 80% of text editing outside of geany or codeblocks. I don't have any actual reason to be embarassed, since I'm actually perfectly comfortable in vi and and the command line on some old sco box without mc available, it's got to be just because I started among guys who themse…

Don't feel bad. It's a much better way of poking around than typing ls, cd etc.

Also, a common usecase for me is having a folder full of files dumped together and I want to move some of them according to arbitrary criteria. Marking them with Insert in MC is so so much less work than typing everything.

Being good at something is also using the right tool for the job. CLIs shine at some things. TUIs and GUIs at others. They're complementary. It's not like one is better than the other.

Re: Use Midnight Commander like a pro (2015)

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And for users of GUIs who are (understandably) fed up with GNOME and all the GTK Stuff, I can wholeheartedly recommend Dolphin, KDEs standard filebrowser. Which isn't on Hiatus, doesn't require GTK, and has switchable Split views (aka. dual-pane), and tabs (where each tab may have its own split view).

Dolphin isa a bit useless for serious operations. It uses KIO for file operations (copy, move...), that invokes separate API call for every file, and is very slow and unreliable for large number of files. Other file managers (Thunar in XFCE) do not have this problem.

GUI file managers are usually used for things where speed is a non-issue. For anything else, Right-Click "Open Terminal Here".

Re: Use Midnight Commander like a pro (2015)

#85
post #35

For users prefering GUI applications, I would like to suggest Sunflower FM, a GTK3 based dual-pane file manager: https://sunflower-fm.org/ As usual with such applications it seems to be a bit on hiatus, but maybe some developers would be interested to lend a hand?

And for users of GUIs who are (understandably) fed up with GNOME and all the GTK Stuff, I can wholeheartedly recommend Dolphin, KDEs standard filebrowser. Which isn't on Hiatus, doesn't require GTK, and has switchable Split views (aka. dual-pane), and tabs (where each tab may have its own split view).

I used Dolphin for a short while, but it's a bit slow and unreliable with large copying.

Went back to caja.

Re: Use Midnight Commander like a pro (2015)

#87
post #21

On Windows, try Altap Salamander. It's free and open-source.

There's the free & open source clone of Total Commander - Double Commander. It's compatible with TC extensions, and just like TC also written in FreePascal.

And Unreal Commander (freeware), also compatible with TC plugins. I'm usually on Fedora, I use Krusader there.

Re: Use Midnight Commander like a pro (2015)

#88
post #35

For users prefering GUI applications, I would like to suggest Sunflower FM, a GTK3 based dual-pane file manager: https://sunflower-fm.org/ As usual with such applications it seems to be a bit on hiatus, but maybe some developers would be interested to lend a hand?

All GUI OFM-s I've seen missed the main (IMO) feature of Midnight Commander: seamless integration with the plain shell. In MC I can select files with Ins/*, then run command with %t macro to process selected files, then press Ctrl+o and look to the shell output, then maybe run some other shell commands in the full-screen mode, then press Ctrl+o again and return to the dual-panel mode. Moreover, I can edit shell script with the embedded editor (F4), then press Ctrl+o, run the script, read the output, press Ctrl+o and edit the script if needed.

Re: Use Midnight Commander like a pro (2015)

#89
post #5

The nice thing about Midnight Commander is that it has a hex viewer and editor.

Moreover, editor allows to switch to console via Ctrl-O, which turns it into an simple IDE for console programs: edit code, Ctrl-O, run program, Ctrl-C Ctrl-O, repeat.

With neovim it's easy also with:

* Ctrl+Z

* Do something in the shell

* fg

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