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Midnight Commander Development Revived
richlv writes "Popular Unix console file manager Midnight Commander has experienced a stall for the last few years. Most distributions (including the conservative Slackware) shipped patched packages or snapshots. Despite that, everybody had a favorite bug or two — either inability to specify ssh connection port, or problems with interrupted FTP sessions. Or maybe copying of larger datasets. Or maybe the infamous 'shell is still active' message, which often brought unexpected changes of current directory with it. Whatever it was, we either cursed it every time, or learned to live with it. It seems that finally something many were waiting for has happened — there's some activity on mc development. Check out the new homepage, and let's hope revival is both healthy and lengthy."
I'm still waiting for a restart on wmaker's development. anyone have any news about it ?
What ? Me, worry ?
I love mc!
I use it all the time for patch management. One little tidbit that most people do not know about mc is that you can cd into a patch. Edit the diffs in the patch, and copy a diff from one patch to another patch file, just like copying or moving a file.
Steven Rostedt
-- Nevermind
Midnight Commander is one of the tools that I could live without, but I sure wouldn't want to. I use it all over the place ... on the Solaris servers and my Windows XP workstation here at work, on my Linux, OS/2, and Windows boxes at home, on my Nokia 770 tablet, etc.
It makes it easier to delete files and directory trees with certainty (and accuracy!), the built-in editor is good enough for modifying shell scripts and even making moderate code changes to more involved programs, its built-in FTP capability is invaluable when one has to flip a lot of files or directories between hosts, and its customizable menus and panelization capabilities can add some fairly powerful capabilities to even the most dedicated command-line user.
I love my Midnight Commander! :-)
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
The choice of tools that one has is rarely an either/or choice.
That's why I tend to write a mix of shell scripts, Perl, and C code depending on the task at hand.
It's also why I sometimes use Midnight Commander to perform tasks which I could also manage using other (and often simpler) tools. Sometimes file copies in the morning go astray -- I find this happens less often when I use a tool which explicitly shows me the destination. Sometimes using a color-coded editor is nice when my eyes are tired and I'm not on a server which has vim installed (that means most of them here).
It's Windows mentality to assume that there's only one solution for the job, it's not UNIX mentality. :-)
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
While I'll be glad to see the resurrection of Midnight Commander, I'm not chomping at the bit because I think that the Worker file manager is a much better alternative. Its design will be immediately recognizable to those who have spent any time with the Amiga because it is based on (which is a nice way of saying it's a virtual copy of) Directory Opus. Check it out. You won't be disappointed.