What orthodox file manager for OS X could I use?
muCommander (free)
muCommander has classic orthodox file manager keybindings. Sadly MC is not very mac'ish and lacks multiple tabs.
Path Finder
Although not free, I have been using Path Finder for years and love it dearly. Two features I like the most from this applications are:
- I can have two side-by-side panels, what you are looking for. Not only that, each panel can have multiple tabs.
- I can go into a directory by hitting the return key, cmd+O still works.
CRAX Commander
This is a graphical, dual-panel file manager with support for operations (copy, move, delete). This software has built-in support for SSH and FTP. This is not free software but you can download a demo version from the program site.
Double Commander (LGPLv2)
Double Commander is inspired by Total Commander, and is a cross-platform application that works well on OSX (I'm running on Yosemite, 10.10.5, Early 2015 Macbook).
It is highly configurable (in the screenshot, compared with "out of the box", I have configured the free-space display, enabled the left-sidebar tree view, added zebra-stripes, and used Linux Bionlinum as the display font). A partial feature list from the website:
- Unicode support
- Tabbed interface
- Multi-rename tool
- Custom columns
- Built in file viewer (F3) to view files of in hex, binary or text format
- Internal text editor (F4) with syntax hightlighting
- Archives are handled like subdirectories. You can easily copy files to and from archives. Supported archive types: ZIP, TAR GZ, TGZ, LZMA and also BZ2, RPM, CPIO, DEB, RAR.
- All operations working in background
- Extended search function with full text search in any files
- Configurable button bar to start external programs or internal menu commands
- Total Commander WCX, WDX and WLX plug-ins support
- + supports FTP/Network operations
It has recently (as of this posting) reached 0.7 and was noted on Webupd8 where a bit of a review plus more description can be found.
For those Mac users who like their apps "pretty", this interface will probably leave something to be desired. For those accustomed to using "commander"-like file managers on Windows or Linux, but now are on Macs ... it is a treat!