NuCommander

NuCommander aims to be a fast, small orthodox file manager for Linux with an emphasis on a keyboard driven user interface.

Design

The twin pane interface, of Norton Commander, is preserved however all redundant UI elements, such as command buttons and toolbars are removed in favour of a clean, minimal user interface.

Features

NuCommander has the basic features expected in an orthodox file manager:

• Browsing Directories - Both regular directories and archives.
• Basic Commands - File copying, moving, renaming and deleting.
• Opening Files - In their default applications.
• Archive Plugin Interface - For creating plugins to read new archive types.

Fuzzy Filtering

The file listing can be filtered using a fuzzy search. This allows you to display only files which match a particular search string, whether the search string matches in the beginning or the middle of the file name. For example the search string “linux” will match the file names “linux” as well as “x86_64-linux-gnu”

File names which contain disjoint occurrences of the characters in the search string, in the same order, will also be matched. For example the search string “lnx” will match “linux, as well as any other file name which contains an “l” an “n” and an “x”, in that order, separated by any number of characters.

Easy Directory Switching

NuCommander allows multiple directories to be open at the same time. Changing which directory is displayed in the left or right pane can be done by simply pressing a key, which brings up the list of the current open directories, selecting the directory from the list and pressing enter.

There is no need to have to find and click on the tab, of the directory you want to switch to, nor do you have to cycle through all the open directories until you reach the right one. Furthermore, the open directories are not tied to any particular pane. A directory which was originally opened in the left pane, can later be displayed in the right pane and vice versa. This can all be done without having to drag and drop the tab from the left pane to the right pane.

Custom Commands

Custom commands can be written in Lua which is a lightweight, however fully-fledged, programming language.

The “view” and “open-terminal” commands are implemented in Lua, located in the <prefix>/share/nucommander/commands directory. The view and terminal programs can be changed by editing these files directly or copying them over to ~/.local/share/nucommander/commands.

The API exposed to Lua is currently very limited, however will be greatly expanded in the next release.

Customizable Keybindings

The keys to which commands, whether built in or custom, are fully customizable. Any command can be bound to virtually any key.

Status

Releases of NuCommander are available however it is still at alpha-level thus it may contain bugs and some important features are yet to be implemented.