norte / Coming from somewhere?

norte next to the file managers you know.

Name: norte
Author: norte

They are great tools, kept alive by people we admire, and norte owes them the orthodox model. It is not here to replace any of them, only to be one more friendly option. This is what it adds, and what it does not have yet.

Feature	norte	Midnight Commander	Far Manager	Total Commander	yazi
Runs in a terminal	✓	✓	✓	—	✓
Native desktop window	✓	—	—	✓	—
Two panes by default	✓	✓	✓	✓	—Miller columns
Several screens on one core (daemon)	✓	—	—	—	—DDS syncs state, not tasks
SFTP	✓	✓	Via pluginNetBox	Via pluginSFTP plugin	✓
S3 / object storage	✓	Via plugins3+ extfs, reported broken	Via pluginNetBox	Via pluginthird-party wfx	—
Archives as folders	✓	✓	✓	✓	Via pluginarchivemount.yazi
Journal of every operation	✓hash-chained	—	—	Partlyoptional log file	—
AI agents, under a policy (MCP)	✓	—	—	—	—
Plugins, sandboxed with consent	✓WASM, per capability	—scripts, full rights	—native DLLs	—native DLLs	—Lua, no sandbox documented
Copies in the background	✓	✓	Via plugin	✓	✓
Platforms	Linux · Windows (preview) · macOS from source	Linux · macOS · BSD	Windows (far2l fork: Linux, macOS)	Windows · Android	Linux · macOS · Windows
License	AGPL-3.0 (protocol MIT/Apache)	GPL-3.0+	BSD-3-Clause	Shareware	MIT

✓YesVia pluginPartly—No

Checked against each project's own documentation on 26 September 2026. Something wrong or out of date? Tell us in an issue.

Sources

When norte is not the one for you

You need macOS binaries today.

Far Manager's far2l and yazi ship them; on macOS norte builds from source for now.

You want decades of battle-testing.

Midnight Commander has them. norte is an alpha, and says so.

You like Miller columns and a big Lua ecosystem.

That is yazi, and it is excellent at it.

Whichever you pick, you are in good company. If one of them serves you well, star it, report a bug, send a patch or just thank its maintainers: the orthodox family is still going because of them.

Download

Ready to point north?

Install the Linux alpha today, or build norte anywhere Rust runs. No account and no telemetry.

Terminal · Linux x86_64v0.3.0-alpha.16

ntc — the file manager

$curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -LsSf https://github.com/compilando/norte/releases/download/v0.3.0-alpha.16/norte-tui-installer.sh | sh

norte — daemon, CLI, MCP

$curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -LsSf https://github.com/compilando/norte/releases/download/v0.3.0-alpha.16/norte-cli-installer.sh | sh

All downloads Build from source

The window · one bundle, three binaries

.debDebian · Ubuntudpkg -i54 MB↓.rpmFedora · openSUSEdnf install54 MB↓.AppImageAnything elsechmod +x126 MB↓

Windows · first preview, unsigned

setup.exeWindows 10 · 11 x64installs per user, no admin38 MB↓.zipPortableunzip, run norte-gui.exe56 MB↓

Each package carries norte and ntc with it, so a clean install always has a daemon to talk to.

Linux x86_64, and a first Windows x86_64 preview. macOS builds from source; binaries come the day releases are built in CI.