When comparing Virtual Box vs Midnight Commander, the Slant community recommends Midnight Commander for most people. In the question“What are the best Mac OSX apps for someone that's new to Apple?” Midnight Commander is ranked 6th while Virtual Box is ranked 15th. The most important reason people chose Midnight Commander is:
Midnight commander uses the full screen of the terminal in a very efficient way. It displays two panels for files horizontally. On the bottom it has the most useful commands with their corresponding key attached. All of this makes for a very intuitive interface both for beginners and experienced users.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Compatible with Many Operating Systems
It works for Windows, macOS, Linux, BSD, and many others.
Pro Beginner friendly
A virtual machine can be set up in minutes if a ISO file to load is already available.
Pro Works well and fast for Windows host and Linux guest
Pro Free and open source
Pro Many free images available
Though most are linux flavors at https://virtualboxes.org/
Oracle's virtualbox site has others.
Pro Can do snapshots
Pro A lot of customization
VirtualBox has multiple virtualization options. Each one may be tailored to the guest operating system’s needs. This makes it especially good on virtualizing older systems, such as DOS, obscure distros, etc.
Pro Intuitive interface
Midnight commander uses the full screen of the terminal in a very efficient way. It displays two panels for files horizontally. On the bottom it has the most useful commands with their corresponding key attached. All of this makes for a very intuitive interface both for beginners and experienced users.
Pro Can be run in the terminal
Being a terminal application means that it's suited for people who spend most of their time on the terminal because they don't have to switch windows in order to open their file manager. It also means that they can use it both locally and remotely.
Pro Easy to use
Midnight commander is easy and intuitive to use. The most common commands are displayed in the bottom (move, copy, paste, delete, edit, view, make directory). Files can be selected with the arrow keys which move the cursor through them. The Enter key goes down in a directory. To move the focus between two panels the tab key is used.
Pro Lightweight
Pro Stable
Pro Often available in default repository
and hence easy to install by usually package manager.
Pro Lynx-like motion
Cursor+left to go to parent directory, cursor+right to go into child directory.
Pro Well-presented
Cons
Con Lacks video performance
Virtualbox has a hard cap of 256MB of video memory. This could make newer operating systems run slower.
Con Minimal CPU customization
You can only enable/disable certain features. You cannot cap the speed of the CPU, which is required to run systems such as Windows 95.
Con File viewer: searching can be quite cumbersome
Especially searching next or previous.
Con No directory bookmarks
Con No easy way to change colors matching certain files
There probably is a possibility, but it is not easy.
Con Quirky and hard to remember shortcuts
E.g. when trying to take the current directory's path to the command line.
Con Lacks drag and drop feature
With midnight commander you cannot drag and drop files to move them around. Instead, you have to do the necessary actions in order to move files around (cut and paste or copy and delete).
Con Can only be run in the terminal
MC lacks a standalone GUI option.