Why I recommend these 5 Linux file managers in place of GUIs – and they’re all free

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ZDNET Highlights

• Sometimes, in Linux, all you need is the terminal.
• You can also manage files within the terminal.
• These five apps are free and easy to use.

Sometimes, a GUI won’t work.

For example, I may be logged into a remote Linux server, and I need an easier way to manage files than normal commands. Or, I may already be in a terminal window on a local machine and think I might as well be there.

Or, maybe I just prefer the command line.

There are several reasons why you might want to adopt a terminal-based file manager on Linux. No, they’re not as convenient as GUIs, but they’re great to have around when they’re needed.

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But which ones should you consider? When you dive down that rabbit hole, you’ll find there’s a lot there. However, for me, there are only a handful of bubbles at the top, and they are here.

1. Midnight Commander

Midnight Commander has been around for a long time. In fact, this file manager existed when I first started using Linux. Midnight Command (also known as MC) is the most famous terminal-based file manager for Linux and is about as close as we get to using a terminal-based file manager in the guise of a GUI.

MC is powerful. In fact, it’s just as powerful as a GUI file manager, and it even includes mouse integration, meaning you can open menus and navigate through directories with a single click of the mouse. One thing you can’t do with the mouse is open files. However, MC does include built-in support for your text editor of choice (like nano).

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MC includes features like dual-pane viewing, basic file operations (like copy, move, rename, and delete), batch renaming, FTP support, customization, Unicode support, remote access (via SSH), and more.

You can install MC from your distribution’s standard repositories with these commands:

• Ubuntu/Debian-based distributions – sudo apt-get install mc -y.
• Fedora-based distribution – sudo dnf install mc-y.
• Arc-based distribution – sudo pacman -s mc.

2. yeezy

I like Yazzie more than MC, mostly because it respects the system theme and doesn’t bother me with too many features. Yazzie is written in Rust, which makes it very fast (especially when running on a desktop that is also written in Rust, like COSMIC).

One of the best features of Yazzie is that it includes image preview support. The only caveat to image preview support is that it is only supported in specific terminals, such as Ghosty, iTerm2, Console, Tabi, Bobcat and a few others. If you use a different terminal, it will fall back to the X11 or Wayland protocol, and image previews will become pixelated and useless.

Yazzie also includes built-in code highlighting, image decoding, and a plug-in system to extend the feature set.

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Yazzie can be installed with Flatpak using the command:

install flatpak yazzi

4. Ranger Console File Manager

Ranger has a Vim-like interface and uses a three-column design, which is great for navigating directories and viewing files. Ranger can preview text files, images, PDFs and videos.

OK, the video preview is a bit misleading, because Ranger actually opens a video view (w3m). The same is true for image previews. This means that if you are connected to a remote machine, you will not be able to see those files.

Like most terminal-based file managers, you navigate directories using your keyboard arrow keys. When you access a text file, Ranger automatically opens a third column for preview. Press Enter on your keyboard, and Ranger will open the file in your default text editor.

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Ranger can be installed with one of the following commands:

• Debian/Ubuntu-based distributions – sudo apt-get install Ranger -y
• fedora-base distribution – sudo dnf install ranger -y
• Arch-based distributions – sudo pacman -s ranger

5. Nann

If you’re a minimalist, you’ll love NNN because it’s as minimalist as you can get. When you open the file manager, you get a single-column list of the current working directory. That minimalism means you only have to use your keyboard’s arrow keys to interact with the file manager and then open the file with the Enter key. There is very little in the way of bells and whistles in NNN, but it serves the purpose quite well. You can also copy or move files by selecting them (using the space bar) and then using the p key to copy them and the v key to move them.

If you are unsure about how to interact with NNN, simply ? press? Press the key on your keyboard to bring up the Help file, where you’ll find that NNN actually offers many other features, such as filters, file statistics, rename, archives, bookmarks and more.

Another good thing about NNN is that it is fast.

You can install NNN from the standard repository with the command:

• Ubuntu/Debian-based distributions – sudo apt-get install nnn -y
• Fedora-based distributions – sudo dnf install nnn -y
• Arch-based distributions – sudo pacman -s nnn