I am vim-lover and I sometimes fire off Midnight Commander when I want to browse some content visually. Not spending much time in it, but I find this file commander very cool. Last weekend I bumped into vifm.

Installation in Fedora is pretty straightforward, I like “q” key alias for running it (and I have remapped this key in vifm to quit - by default it’s for macros):

$ yum -y install vifm
$ alias q="vifm"
$ rpm -ql vifm
/usr/bin/vifm
/usr/bin/vifm-pause
/usr/bin/vifmrc-converter
/usr/share/man/man1/vifm.1.gz
/usr/share/vifm/vifm-help.txt
/usr/share/vifm/vifmrc

To move around, you use standard vi keys. Yes, “jkhl” for up, down, into and out a directory (or to execute/open a file). Keys “G” or “gg” moves to the first and last files. Pagination works as in vi as well as many other keys like scrolling, window manipulation (Ctrl-W w or TAB), splits, marks (very cool feature), searching (with highlighting integrated) and few others.

Now guess what. It’s not only vi normal mode that is fully working, but also command-line mode. Yes, you can :noh, :!, !cd, :mark, :set, :split or :wq. And there are more (non-vi) commands available.

So how to actually work with vifm when there is no help bar with F5 for copy and F6 for move? Well, it is vi, right? To copy a file, highlight one or more and press “y” for yank, then go to the destination directory (in the same window or the second one) and press “p” to paste it. To move it, pres “P”. And “yy” will work too - quick yank of the file or directory caret is pointing on. And to yank all files in a directory, “ya” is there for you. Did I write vi registers work too? Use them with double quote key, as usual. This is really cool.

How to highlight? Just like in vi, using “v” or “V” as well as with “t” for highlighting (or tagging) them one by one. You can even search with “/” which will highlight all searches by default. To rename a file, use “cw” combination. There are more actions on a file starting with “c”, like change group, permissions and others. I like “cW” to change file name without extension. Also dialog for changing permissions is awesome (vi movement keys work there).

To explore a file (or view if you want), use “e”. The internal “explorer” imitates less and it has, of course, vi keybindings with search and other features you would expect from a less-like tool. To open a file, use movement key “l” just like if you want to go into a directory. But when you want to open an executable in an associated program (e.g. bash script in editor, sorry I mean vim), then use “i”.

It’s nearly impossible to list all the features, use documentation on the homepage. Note that version in Fedora 16 and 17 has not all features listed in the documentation. Fedora 18 will have the most recent version of course, there are builds for F16/F17 in koji too.