ZDNET recommends five free terminal-based Linux file managers

ZDNET contributor Jack Wallen highlights five free terminal-based file managers for Linux, recommending them for situations where a graphical interface won’t do — for example, when logged into a remote server, already working in a terminal window, or when a user simply prefers the command line.

Wallen says there are many options but only a handful rise to the top. He notes terminal file managers let you manage files without leaving the shell and can be indispensable when needed, even if they aren’t as convenient as a GUI. Midnight Commander (MC) is described as the most well-known, with dual-pane viewing, mouse integration (though the mouse cannot open files), built-in editor support (such as nano), basic file operations, batch renaming, FTP support, customizations, Unicode support and remote access via SSH.

MC can be installed from standard repositories with commands like: Ubuntu/Debian - sudo apt-get install mc -y; Fedora - sudo dnf install mc -y; Arch - sudo pacman -S mc. Yazi, written in Rust, is noted for honoring system themes and speed, and includes image preview support in specific terminals such as Ghostty, iTerm2, Konsole, Tabby and Bobcat; on other terminals it falls back to X11 or Wayland with pixellated previews.

Yazi also includes code highlighting, image decoding and a plug-in system, and can be installed via Flatpak: flatpak install yazi.

Key Topics

Tech, Terminal File Managers, Midnight Commander, Yazi, Ranger, Nnn