Far Manager: files and archives in Windows

I found Linux port only recently but some functions are messed up, no Alt-F1/Alt-F2, search for files in the current pane isn't working (Alt+character1, character2, etc), and copy/paste too. To the point that it's almost unusable. Any advice?

Total Commander is so amazing I keep a Windows VM around just to use it over a network share. Haven't found anything that would come close for rapidly manually categorizing a lot of files. It also uses (minimal) GUI features really well, e.g., compared to Far Manager, a TUI program, it has tabs in default config, shows icons, and uses variable-width fonts in listings and search for increased information density.

Love Total Commander. Bought license 20 years ago and still use it. Before that I used Norton Commander and Dos Navigator in dos-era. So powerful tools.

Try free clone of TC, Double Commander: https://doublecmd.sourceforge.io/

Are there any plugins that you would recommend?

It's been open source for 16 years.

As far as I remember Far was always extremely popular. As far as I remember before "free license" there were various cracks readily available. At some point the author gave up and said something along the line, I won't make money from "russians" anyway so please use this "license" and may be you will stop to produce those cracks!

When on Windows, Far becomes tool to go if you are developer. Powerful file browser with shell and quick viewer and editor, also with ability to create shortcuts to dirs and commands. All together it creates this mouse-free flow which many devs like.

This and other 2-pane file managers in general seem to be very popular amongst people from ex-Soviet countries.

That's correct, at some point magic license "xUSSR регистрация" (ex-USSR registration) allowed you to register for free. Quoting from memory, the exact text may have been slightly different. The idea was to let people from former Soviet Union use the fully-featured version without paying shareware price they generally could not afford back then.

He probably hasn’t bothered to buy a WinRAR license ;)

real recognizes real

My best guess is mouse oriented UI and desktop environments targeted at non expert users.

Two-panel file managers solve certain interaction problems in a keyboard driven and terminal based environments. Those aren't as much of a problem in a modern desktop environment where you can open multiple file explorer windows and copy-paste or drag and drop files between windows of your choice. The way graphical desktop environments work there is less ambiguity for selecting source/destination in case of more than 2 windows. Clipboard an drag and drop interfaces allow dragging files even into other other non file explorer programs. For example you can drag a file from file explorer into a video editing or image editing software the same way you would drag it between two file explorer windows.

Clipboard and drag and drop APIs is usually outside the scope of most terminal programs. Working with multiple programs at the same time efficiently requires additional software like screen or tmux. And the means for exchanging information between programs is limited (beside going through file system or chaining list of programs with pipes, but that's a different usage paradigm). Two panel file manger solves both of these issues by drawing two contexts and providing interactions between them in single program.

Two-panel file manager can provide a very effective tool for experts, even in a GUI based systems due to having an interface that's designed with keyboard and efficiency in mind. Which is why I think they are still popular in certain niche. But for a non expert users keyboard driven interfaces can be opaque and hard to discover. Mouse based graphical interfaces are much friendlier for new users and make it easier to discover functionality, even if they are less efficient and require more clicks/key presses for experts.

Everything is insanely good. I sometimes wonder if it’s less known only due to its too-clever name

Few hours after really trying Total Commander I got severly hooked - and for the last 15 years or so I have been heavily addicted to it and recommend it to anyone I Can get to listen ;-)

Does it have to be better for there to be a reason to exist? Far manager and MC are each primarily targeting different operating systems. Yes there are MC port for windows, and Far manager port for Linux, but there is certain amount polish, platform specific integration and edge case handling that's hard to achieve when creating crossplatform tool targeting the common funcitionality of all platforms. Targeting a specific platform and it's api allows including functionality that's unlikely to be found in generic cross platform tools even if basic feature list is similar.

Some examples of functionality that's unlikely to be included in MC (some if it might be from plugins, but my point remains): * native context menu -> even though Far is made mostly around terminal based UI, i remember the native file explorer context menu being available. Can be sometimes useful for quickly accessing to tools that integrate with file explorer, but not surprisingly doesn't have direct Far integration or plugin. * Conemu (terminal emulator) integration - less important now that Windows has a better first party terminal emulator. Provided tab integration and few other minor quality of life improvements. * I remember there also being stuff like plugins for image preview which where only possible to targeting one specific platform and going outside the bounds of plain terminal API

Far manager also has a rich ecosystem of plugins. From what I know MC has no plugin system at all.

As pointed out in some other comments not all shortcuts work in terminal based Far manager Linux port and that full exprience requires wxwidgets backend.

None of this individually is something that would appear in high level feature list, or lack of which would be a deal breaker. But it contributes to overall feel of polish and efficiency which is quite important for a productivity tool like this. This is similar to why macOS users often prefer utilities natively targeting macOS. And if you don't care about little things, might as well use the default file explorer + terminal.

I used Far quite a bit when I was working as a Windows developer. For the last few years I have been on Linux both for work and at home, but I never got into habit of using MC. Hard to explain why it didn't felt right, maybe it was just muscle memory and laziness to relearn it. Maybe the different set of tools available on Windows and Linux steers me into using the operating system differently.

I say the same thing about Directory Opus.

There's a Linux port too.