The top of each panel displays the name of the current directory for that panel. The user interface for Midnight Commander is two text-mode file panels, left and right, which each display the contents of a directory. The figure below shows Midnight Commander when run as root in a terminal emulator session.

You can start Midnight Commander from the CLI with the mc command. This command installs Midnight Commander: For Fedora and CentOS, my distros of choice, I use YUM. Midnight Commander might already be installed on your distribution, but if it is not you can install it using your distribution’s package manager. Clicking on a file will select it, clicking on a menu item or a function key button will launch that menu or function. When used in a terminal session as part of a GUI desktop, Midnight Commander is mouse-aware. It can be used with almost any of the common shells and remote terminals through SSH. I use Midnight Commander frequently because I often have need to interact with local and remote Linux computers using the CLI. It is particularly useful when a GUI is not available but can also be used as a primary file manager in a terminal session even when you are using a GUI.

Midnight Commander (MC) is a text-based Command Line Interface (CLI) program. Free online course: RHEL Technical Overview.

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