5 Where to get more information
8 Obtaining GNU Midnight Commander
11 GNU Midnight Commander (also referred to as MC) is a user shell with
12 text-mode full-screen interface. It can be run on the OS console,
13 in xterm and other terminal emulators.
15 GNU Midnight Commander allows you to manage files while making most of
16 you screen and giving you a clear representation of the filesystem, yet
17 it's simple enough to be run over a telnet or ssh session.
23 To compile the GNU Midnight Commander you need at least to have a copy
24 of the GLib library, available at ftp://ftp.gtk.org/pub/gtk/.
30 GNU Midnight Commander was conceived as a free close of John Socha's
31 Norton Commander (TM). It also takes the best from more recent software
32 with similar interfaces. GNU Midnight Commander comes with mouse support
33 on xterm and optionally on the Linux console.
35 Some features are specific to the POSIX environment MC runs on, some are
36 familiar to the users of similar software for other operating system.
39 o Built in Virtual File System: manipulate remote file systems
40 through the FTP and SMB protocols or over secure shell, browse
41 tar, compressed tar, RPM, zip, cpio, lha and rar archives with
44 o All of GNU Midnight Commander operations work with the
45 virtual file system, enabling you to do complex tasks.
47 o Mouse support on the Linux console and under xterm and rxvt.
49 o Learn Keys: GNU Midnight Commander may be configured at run
50 time to support any kind of input keys for a given terminal,
51 making its operation even on the most weird terminals a
54 o Text and hex editors are available for you to use.
56 o Hotlist allows you to keep a list of common visited
57 locations (including FTP sites).
59 o Command completion: By pressing Alt-Tab in any place where a
60 filename or an executable are expected, GNU Midnight Commander
61 will complete the name for you. If you press Alt-Tab the second
62 time you can get a list box with all possible completions.
64 o Subshell support: Run your commands by a real shell
65 interpreter. GNU Midnight Commander interacts with bash,
66 tcsh and zsh to provide you with all of the facilities
67 available in your preferred shell.
69 o Find file command can search for the file contents.
71 o Background operations allows you to copy or move files from
72 any virtual file system while you do other tasks (i.e., you
73 can do background FTP copies).
75 o Proxy support with our ftpfs.
77 o Linux file recovery: If you are using Linux, you can recover
78 deleted files from an ext2fs partition with the undelete file
79 system. This is a low level file recovery function that will
80 recover files deleted by any program on Linux.
82 o External panelization: You can run any arbitrary external
83 command and GNU Midnight Commander will display the output
84 generated as a file listing that can be manipulated as a
87 o Emacs like key bindings in all of our widgets.
89 o Powerful context dependent actions are available.
91 o Powerful built-in file viewer: The file viewer, together
92 with the context dependent actions is used to format man
93 pages on the fly, coloring mail messages and more.
96 Where to get more information:
97 ------------------------------
99 There is a mailing list for discussion on enhancing the program, future
100 directions and announcements; if you want to subscribe, visit
102 http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/mc/
104 There is a WWW page for GNU Midnight Commander at
106 http://www.gnome.org/projects/mc/
109 GNU Midnight Commander:
110 -----------------------
112 GNU Midnight Commander is released under the GNU General Public
113 License version 2.0 or any later version. A copy of the file is
114 included with this distribution package.
116 If you have comments, you can send them to the mailing list:
120 If you have made a patch send it to the developers' mailing list:
124 Help develop and enhance free software.
130 These are hints for the text mode edition:
132 o Use the F-Keys for invoking the commands in the function key bar.
133 If your terminal doesn't support F-keys, you can use the <ESC digit>
134 sequence to invoke the corresponding F-digit key.
136 o Tab changes the current panel.
138 o All input lines have emacs-like key-bindings (command history is
139 accessed through the M-p and M-n keys).
141 o The panels accept C-n, C-p for browsing the panel (like in Emacs).
143 o M-Enter copies the currently selected file name to the input line.
145 o M-Tab completes the current word (or tries to).
147 o The Virtual File System is a cute addition to the project, you may
148 browse in tar and compressed tar files as well as browsing remote
149 machines with the mcfs file system.
151 o Please read the manual page.
153 o Read the file src/TODO for the current projects.
155 You can access the whole documentation online with the F1 key,
156 although it's not as nice as the groff printed manual page :-)
159 Where you may obtain GNU Midnight Commander
160 -------------------------------------------
162 You can download the latest version of GNU Midnight Commander at
164 ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/stable/sources/mc/
170 Please, send a detailed description of your problem to
173 Include the version of the program, the operating system that you are
174 using, the compiler and compiler flags used to compile the program (if
175 you know them), what kind of distribution you are using (if a GNU/Linux
178 If the program crashed and produces a core dump, please provide a
179 stack trace of the program.
181 You can do this by running dbx or gdb like this: