Use Midnight Commander Terminal File Manager to view file in Linux Terminal. Midnight Commander or MC is one of the best terminal file managers for Linux Ubuntu command line. Here is how to install and open Midnight Commander terminal file manager.
Midnight Commander File Manager
Midnight Commander is Terminal File Manager for Linux Ubuntu Systems. Midnight Commander (MC) is a visual file manager is a feature rich full-screen text mode application that allows you to copy, move and delete files and whole directory trees, search for files and run commands in the subshell.
The Midnight Commander file manager is based on versatile text interfaces, such as Ncurses or S-Lang, and allows it to work on a regular console, inside an X Window terminal, over SSH connections and all kinds of other popular remote shells.
Some of the popular features of the Midnight Commander File Manager include:
- Built in Virtual File System: manipulate remote file systemsthrough the FTP and SFTP protocols or over secure shell, browsecontents of tar, ar, rpm, zip, cpio, lha and rar archives justlike local files.
- Almost all operations work with the virtual file system,enabling you to do complex tasks, like viewing files inarchives on an FTP server.
- Mouse support on most terminal emulators for X Window Systemas well as on the Linux console.
- Learn Keys: GNU Midnight Commander may be configured at runtime to support any kind of input keys for a given terminal,making its operation possible even on most weird terminals.
- Text and hex editors are available for you to use (hex editoris a part of the viewer).
- Hotlist allows you to keep a list of common visited locations,including remote sites and directories inside archives.
- Command completion: By pressing Alt-Tab in any place where afilename or an executable are expected, GNU Midnight Commanderwill complete the name for you. If you press Alt-Tab for thesecond time, you get a list box with all possible completions.
- Subshell support: Run your commands by a real shellinterpreter. GNU Midnight Commander interacts with bash,tcsh and zsh to provide you with all of the facilitiesavailable in your preferred shell.
- Find file command can search for the file contents.
- Background operations allow you to copy or move files fromany virtual file system while you do other tasks (i.e., youcan do background FTP copies).
- FTP proxy is supported.
- Linux file recovery: If you are using Linux, you can recoverdeleted files from an ext2 or ext3 partition with the undeletefile system. This is a low level file recovery function thatcan recover files deleted by any program on Linux.
- External panelization: You can run any arbitrary externalcommand and GNU Midnight Commander will display the outputgenerated as a file listing that can be manipulated as aregular directory.
- Emacs-like key bindings are used in all widgets.
- Context dependent actions (open, view, edit) are available.
- The built-in file viewer, together with the context dependentactions is used to format man pages on the fly, coloring mailmessages and more.
- The built-in editor supports syntax highlighting and externalactions, such as spell checking and formatting.
Install Midnight Commander Terminal File Manager
Linux Ubuntu and Ubuntu Derivative Systems (on Debian, Ubuntu and Mint) users can install Midnight Commander Terminal File Manager using the following commands:
sudo apt install mcOnce the installation is complete, open Midnight Commander from applications tab or simply type “mc” (without quotes) in terminal and press enter to launch Midnight Commander.