When comparing Midnight Commander vs Caja, the Slant community recommends Midnight Commander for most people. In the question“What are the best file managers for UNIX-like systems?” Midnight Commander is ranked 6th while Caja is ranked 16th. 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
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
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
Pro Easy to configure
Pro It has a reasonable set of features, out of the box
Not too much cluttered, but enough customizable.
Pro Caja script extension makes it more useful
Caja script extension adds your script in script menu, then passes the file name as a parameter. This allows you to run operation which is not included in Caja.
Pro Allows you to access remote or local locations
You can click the Files entry in the panel to access a specific location (remote or local), connect to a certain server (FTP, SFTP, SAMBA, etc.), access your bookmarks, open a new window, as well as to change its default functionality.
Pro Open or run as administrator in the right-click-menu of the mouse
Pro It just works
Customizable and clean, this is crushing that garbage nautilus, the overrated p.o.s. gnome destroyed.
Cons
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.
Con Frequently very slow to transfer multiple small files
Folders move fine, but it chokes on files, where other browsers take seconds.
Con Mostly unconfigurable
There are not many ways to configure Caja to fit your needs. Besides what can be seen in the settings button you can't configure it further.
Con Sort Order / Limited Configuration Options
It ignores special characters when sorting files and folders. Underscore, tilde, bracket, ASCII characters, .... everthing not recognized in numeric/alpha sorting. Also, I found no way to remove the triangle to reveal contents of sub-folders rather than opening... but I did quit looking after several seemly unalterable functionality issues.
Con Very slow to list thousands of files
Unusably so.
