Although we all remember that everything started with legendary Norton Commander, somehow lots of TC users religiously believe that every other, two pane file manager, is a not worthy clone. They all share the same roots, but TC with its rich Plugin library managed to capture the largest user base.
In this article I will try to cover the most popular alternatives for both TC and NC. It is not a review though, so you won’t find any particular recommendation at the end. Everyone chooses the set of features that is relevant for his or her needs.
So without any further delay, lets start:
1. Beesoft Commander
Beesoft Commander
Unfortunately the Home site of this commander doesn’t provide a lot of additional info, but there are some more shots that might be helpful.
2. emelFM2
emelFM2
emelFM2 uses a simple and efficient interface pioneered by Norton Commander, in the 1980s. The main window is divided into three parts, described as “panes” or “panels”. Two of those (side-by-side or top-to-bottom) show the contents of selected filesystem directories. The third pane, at the bottom of the window, shows the output of commands executed within the program. Those panes can be resized, and any one or two of them can be hidden and unhidden, on request. A built-in command-line, toolbar buttons or assigned keys can be used to initiate commands.
3. gentoo (yes, Gentoo distr. folks are cool with this name)
gentoo
Some of the main features of gentoo are:
- Written from scratch, in straight ANSI C and utilizing the GTK+ toolkit.
- Aims to be 100% graphically configurable, and comes pretty close, too.
- Powerful file recognition system allows you to configure how files of different types are shown (with colors and icons), and what happens when you doubleclick them (spawn image viewers, music players, etc).
- Includes more than 120 original pixmaps icons (16×15 pixels).
- Internal support for most file operations (copy, move, rename, makedir etc).
4. GNOME Commander
GNOME Commander
Features:
- GTK-2 GUI with standard mouse interactions.
- GNOME mime types (MIME-Type management under development).
- FTP using GnomeVFS ftp module.
- SAMBA access.
- Right click mouse menu with the usual file operations to run, open, open with.., delete or rename files and folders, and also to set properties like ownership and permissions.
- Mouse context menu that easily can be extended by entries calling any kind of external application like viewers, editors or custom scripts to work on selected files or directories.
- Quick device access buttons with automatic mounting and unmounting (“no-mount” option for just quick access to folders or otherwise automounted devices).
- Latest accessed folder history.
- Folder bookmarks.
- Plugin support under development.
- Fast file viewer for text, images and image meta data (Exif and IPTC).
- Tools for searching, quick file name search in current dir, symlinking, comparing directories. …
- A tool for advanced renaming of files supporting various types of meta-data.
- Integrated command line.
5. Krusader
Krusader
IMHO the most feature rich file manager (CLI doesn’t count). I won’t list them all here, but you will find all the info you need on their home page.
8 years in development, with the new KDE 4 version which is knocking on the door, it might be the right choice for some of us.
6. Midnight Commander
Midnight Commander
I bet some of you clicked this thumbnail out of nostalgia for NC
Being a text mode application, GNU Midnight Commander can be used locally or remotely, on the console or under X Window System. By using full screen space of the terminals, it provides an intuitive user interface to the operating system, aiming to be a useful tool for users with any level of experience, from a newbie to a guru.
7. muCommander
muCommander
Java based file manager (that is why the MAC GUI) with all the advantages and disadvantages of that.
Here’s a non-exhaustive list of what you’ll find:
- Virtual filesystem with local volumes, FTP, SFTP, SMB, NFS, HTTP and Bonjour support
- Quickly copy, move, rename files, create directories, email files…
- Browse, create and uncompress ZIP, TAR, GZip, BZip2, ISO/NRG, AR/Deb and LST archives
- ZIP files can be modified on-the-fly, without having to recompress the whole archive
- Universal bookmarks and credentials manager
- Multiple windows support
- Full keyboard access
- Highly configurable
- Available in 20 languages : American & British English, French, German, Spanish, Czech, Simplified & Traditional Chinese, Polish, Hungarian, Russian, Slovenian, Romanian, Italian, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese, Dutch, Slovak, Japanese and Swedish.
8. Tux Commander
Tux Commander
General features:
- Graphical application, uses GTK2 windowing toolkit
- Two directory panels side by side (vertical)
- Tabbed interface, buttons for quick access to favorite places
- Configurable mounter bar for quick access to removable media and network shares
- Multilingual user interface
- Basic VFS (Virtual File System) support, allowing you to browse archives and network places
- Extendable via plugin system, several VFS modules available in the distribution
- Portable, no installation required, usable right after the extraction
- Designed for GNOME and XFCE desktop environments while preserving complete independency (libraries are loaded dynamically when available)
- Extension-based file type actions (associations)
- Threaded file operations
- Large files (> 4GB) support
- Main application written in Object Pascal language (with FreePascal as default compiler), plugins are written in C/C++ language
- Sources available in GIT repository
9. Worker
Worker
One of the fastest file managers in this article. Here are some features:
- Low requirements (basically only the X11 libraries)
- Built-in configuration GUI
- Support for a virtual file system to enter archives, ftp sites, …
- Archives currently supported: tar/tgz/tbz, gzip, bzip2, zip, rar, ar and more from the extfs from Midnight Commander (lha, zoo, rpm, iso9660, diff, arj, cpio, …)
Additionally it’s possible to access servers using ssh, rsh, ftp, http and webdav.
- Many built-in functions like:
- copy, move, rename, delete files
- create directory
- create/change symlinks
- chmod, chown
- text viewer
built-in search
- bookmarks for frequently used directories
- flexible file type system with arbitrary file type actions for single file types or groups of types
- filtered file search in the current directory view
- Assign any external command to buttons, hotkeys or filetypes (e.g. gimp, tar, diff, mount, …)
- UTF8 support
10. XFE
XFE
Xfe is small, very fast and only requires the FOX library to be fully functional. Plus, it can be launched from the command line in a fraction of second. Xfe can also efficiently complete terminal commands.
Features
- Very fast graphic user interface
- UTF-8 support (through the FOX 1.6 library)
- Commander/Explorer interface with four file manager modes : a) one panel, b) a directory tree and one panel, c) two panels, and d) a directory tree and two panels
- Integrated text editor (X File Write, xfw)
- Integrated text viewer (X File View, xfv)
- Integrated image viewer (X File Image, xfi)
- Integrated RPM or DEB packages viewer / installer / uninstaller (X File Package, xfp)
- Copy/cut/paste files from and to your favorite desktop (GNOME/KDE/XFCE)
- Drag and Drop in Xfe and from and to your favorite desktop
- Root mode
- Status line
- File associations
- Optional trash can for file delete operations (trash can directory is ~/.xfe/trash’)
- Auto save registry
- Double click or single click files and directories navigation
- Right mouse click pop-up menu in tree list and file list
- Change file(s) attributes
- Mount/Unmount devices (for Linux only)
- Toolbar
- Bookmarks (up to 20)
- Back and forward history lists for directory navigation
- Path linker for directory navigation
- Color themes (GNOME, KDE, Windows, …)
- Icons themes (Xfe, GNOME, KDE, XFCE, Tango, Windows…)
- Create / Extract archives (tar, zip, 7zip gzip, bzip2, rar, lzh, ace and compress archives are supported)
- Tooltips with file properties
- Progress bars or dialogs for lengthy file operations
- Thumbnails image previews
- Ability to enqueue multimedia files (open command)
- Available in 18 languages
I hope this article will help you decide which file manger is right for you.
