What do you need to know about Midnight Commander?

What do you need to know about Midnight Commander?

The Midnight Commander is a directory browsing and file manipulation program that provides a flexible, powerful, and convenient set of file and directory operations. It is capable of running in either a console or an xterm under X11; mouse support is native under X11 and is provided by the gpm mouse server when used in a Linux console.

How do you activate menus in Midnight Commander?

The “-t” option specifies the type of mouse; if you’re using a different kind of mouse then consult the gpm manual page for the command line option to use. To activate one of the menus you can either click on it with the mouse or hit the F9 key and use the arrow keys to move the desired menu item.

Is the Midnight Commander similar to Norton Commander?

The Midnight Commander is a directory browsing tool which bears a certain remote resemblance to John Socha’s Norton Commander for DOS. Its stability, ease of use, flexibility, and rich feature set make it quite a powerful tool. Its simplicity makes it easy for novices to quickly master the basics.



Midnight Commander is a console file manager and directory browser. It is a friendly system for many tasks in the terminal window, and the quickest way to copy, move or delete multiple files. MC can also do fast ftp and network file transfers. Other unique features are the ability to browse inside archives and undelete files.

How to set permissions on a file in Midnight Commander?

With MC, you only need to select a file then press “ F9 ” > File > Chmod or press “ Ctrl-x ” and “ c “. MC will show to you the current permission of the selected file and show to you more parameters that can be set. Files and directories also have owner and group owner. The privileges of these owners are managed by chmod command above.

How to install Midnight Commander on a Linux machine?

How to Install Midnight Commander in Linux. By default, MC is not installed on a Linux machine. So you need to install it first. On Debian, Ubuntu and Linux Mint you may use this apt-get command: $ sudo apt-get install mc. On RHEL, CentOS and Fedora, you may use this command: # yum install mc.

Which is SMB file system does Midnight Commander Support?

Midnight commander allows making network connections to SMB services (if compiled with support for the SMB file system). SMB File System The smbfs allows you to manipulate files on remote machines with SMB (or CIFS) protocol. These include Windows for Workgroups, Windows 9x/ME/XP, Windows NT, Windows 2000 and Samba.

How to close dialog boxes in Midnight Commander?

For example, to enter Alt-t, press and release the Esc key followed by the “t” key. To close dialog boxes in Midnight Commander, press the Esc key twice. Before we start performing file operations, it’s important to learn how to use the directory panels and navigate the file system.

Which is the Best Editor for Midnight Commander?

Midnight Commander can work with the editor of your choice. On Debian-based systems we are prompted to make a selection the first time we press F4. Debian suggests nano as the default selection, but various flavors of vim are also available along with Midnight Commander’s own built-in editor, mcedit.

What does the Esc key do in Midnight Commander?

Many of the function keys and Alt-key combinations that Midnight Commander uses are intercepted for other purposes by the terminal and window manager. To work around this problem, Midnight Commander allows the Esc key to function as a Meta-key.

How to select files in Midnight Commander on Mac?

Control+T will select files: http://austringer.net/wp/index.php/2008/06/07/mac-os-x-and-midnight-commander-the-missing-insert-key/ For those like me who were drawn here by a Google search based on the title of the question (not relating to Midnight Commander), I still haven’t found a great solution.