Midnight Commander vs muCommander

Midnight Commander is a full-screen file manager with a dual-pane text interface. It can copy, move, and delete files or directory trees, search for files, and run commands in a subshell. An internal viewer, editor, and diff viewer provide tools for inspecting and editing files within the program.

It runs in a regular console or an X Window terminal, and can also be used over SSH and in remote shells. Its virtual filesystem connects to FTP and shell-based remote filesystems; SFTP support depends on compilation with sftpfs. The tar filesystem provides read-only access to tar and compressed tar archives, and scripts can extend the virtual filesystem. Users can choose included skins or create their own.

muCommander is a free, open-source dual-pane file manager for Windows, macOS, and Linux. Its file operations include copying, moving, renaming, batch renaming, and emailing files. Users can keep multiple locations open in tabs and navigate with universal bookmarks, a credentials manager, and configurable keyboard shortcuts. The virtual filesystem works with local volumes and protocols or systems including FTP, SFTP, SMB, NFS, HTTP, Amazon S3, Hadoop HDFS, and Bonjour. Dropbox and Google Drive are the listed cloud storage services. Archive support includes ZIP, RAR, 7z, TAR, GZip, BZip2, ISO/NRG, AR/Deb, and LST. Other features include checksum calculation, customizable toolbars and themes, and support for many languages. A portable version is available, and downloads are also listed for FreeBSD and other Java-supporting operating systems. Running the software requires Java 11 or later. muCommander is released under the GNU GPL v3 license and costs nothing. The download page lists SHA-256 checksums for release packages and an RPM GPG key. Support options include the Gitter community, GitHub issues, and FAQ.