Midnight Commander File Manager

Midnight Commander (mc) is a free and open-source visual file manager for Unix-like operating systems, running in a terminal and providing a user-friendly dual-pane interface for navigating and managing files. Originally developed by Miguel de Icaza (creator of GNOME, later co-founder of Xamarin) in 1994 and maintained by Pavel Roskin, Midnight Commander is one of the oldest and most widely used terminal file managers on Linux. Key features: dual-pane interface with two side-by-side directory panels showing file listings with customizable columns (name, size, modification time, permissions). Panel modes: brief (names only), long (detailed), user-defined columns, and info mode. Quick view mode showing file contents in the opposite panel. Tree view for hierarchical directory navigation. Virtual file system (VFS): access remote and archive files as if they were local directories, supporting FTP, SFTP/SSH, SMB, NFS, tar, zip, gzip, bzip2, xz, lz4, zstd, RPM packages, DEB packages, and ISO images. Built-in text editor (mcedit): full-screen editor with syntax highlighting for over 60 programming languages, search and replace with regular expressions, bookmarks, word wrap, and hex editing mode. Internal viewer (mcview): file viewer with hex mode, text wrapping, and code highlighting. Shell integration: the command-line input at the bottom accepts any shell command while panels show file context. User menu: customizable hotkey-triggered actions (F2) for common file operations, archive extraction, and custom scripts. Extension menu for context-aware file actions based on file type. Directory hotlist for bookmarked directories. Directory synchronization tool. File find utility with content search. FTP link manager. Color themes and customizable key bindings. Cross-platform: Linux, FreeBSD, macOS, Cygwin. GPL.