gFTP is a great ftp client for Ubuntu Linux that provides both a GUI based experience as well as a command line client. There's an easy way to switch between using the default ftp client and using gftp-text. First you'll want to make sure that you've installed gFTP.

We'll use the update-alternatives command to change the setting. Open up a terminal window and type in the following command:

sudo update-alternatives –config ftp

You should see something similar to this:

~$ sudo update-alternatives –config ftp

There are 2 alternatives which provide `ftp'.
Selection Alternative
———————————————–
*+ 1 /usr/bin/netkit-ftp
    2 /usr/bin/gftp-text
Press enter to keep the default[*], or type selection number: 2

For my system, gftp is option 2, so I type that in and hit the enter key.

To test this out, just type in "ftp localhost"… you should see that your system is now using gftp instead.

~$ ftp localhost
gFTP 2.0.18, Copyright (C) 1998-2003 Brian Masney <masneyb@gftp.org>. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions about this program,
please feel free to email them to me. You can always find out the latest news
about gFTP from my website at http://www.gftp.org/
gFTP comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details, see the COPYING file. This
is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain
conditions; for details, see the COPYING file

Username [anonymous]:

Nice and simple.