Far Manager is a critical piece of software for me to be able to use a computer comfortably and efficiently. Used it all the way from Windows 98 to Windows 7, and now Arch Linux.
Especially since LuaJIT support was added in Far 3 (and far2l Linux port's fork, far2m), I made it to be able to execute a line of Lua code under cursor or in a block of selected text, and print the result (if any) to the editor, turning the editor into something conceptually stronger than a REPL or a command prompt combined.
So now I have two upgrades over command prompt: file-focused, as with Far by default, and Lua-focused.
I've been joking that Far Manager has become my real OS. It also was a source of endless debates with my Linux friend, who insists that everything I can do in Far, he can do in Bash quicker, but that seems true only because he doesn't know Far keyboard shortcuts.
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?
Make sure you run wxgtk build, not the terminal one. Terminal is limited on what shortcuts it can do. But wxgtk build runs exactly as windows counterpart - Alt+F1/F2 and many other shortcuts work fine.
Thank you! On Debian i have found the far2l which seems to work. I am trying to see if far can be a replacement for mc, which has been my goto terminal manager... and i like some of the shortcuts there... like <ctrl>-s and start typing (seems that on far, one can press <esc> and start typing for the same. I have not yet figured out how to (easily) get a file name to the command line or how to make vim the default editor when pressing F4...
Ctrl + "[" , Ctrl + "]" - bring the full path in the left panel or the right panel respectively into the command line (so Ctrl"+"[" and then Ctrl+Enter will bring full file path of the file under the cursor into the command line)
Ctrl + PgUp - move up the folder tree
Ctrl + U - swap panels (so the cursor goes from one panel to another, useful when you operate in 2 folders primarily, saves you an Alt+Tab)
Ctrl + LeftArrow, Ctrl + RightArrow - makes one of the panels larger or smaller
Ctrl + 1,2,3,5 - change panel layout (file name 1 column, file name 2 columns, file name with attributes, file name with more attributes)
etc. There's a lot. Not even mentioning all the plugins built in the last 20 years.
Fun fact: it was written by a 24 yo college student (graduate?..) from Chelyabinsk and was pretty much functionally complete couple years later. The same guy who designed RAR file format and built WinRar around the same time.
mc has a "list of bookmarked directories", does far supports such a feature, with a shortcut to bring up the dialog to choose an entry from the list? I haven't found such thing... Only to have particular single directory on a shortcut, which means that I would have to remember the number corresponding to each path...
The closest would probably be FAR menu (F2) where menu options can be edited; you can probably just do "cd [name]" for menu options. I believe there's also history of commands issued in "Alt+F8". So... kinda.
Related: I've been using Total Commander / Windows Commander for quite some time. Still use it occasionally even to this day. If you're into orthodox file managers, check it out.
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.
Have you tried running it under wine? It works perfectly fine on my Linux system. You may only need to add a few shortcuts to convert paths for your custom commands.
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.
I've been using FAR for the last 20+ years on a daily basis and it hasn't crashed a single time for me. I like its minimalist UI, but a quite complex functions are only a click or two away and various plugins extend its functionality in useful ways (for example, Netbox for ftp access). I think it's a fantastically useful and robust tool.
And if you're running Far under ConEmu, copy ConEmu\Plugins\ConEmu folder into Far's Plugins folder. It will do better integration with ConEmu (there will be bunch of new ConEmu related features under F11 menu in Far).
I mostly use arclite, Brackets matching, Netbox (for FTP access), Process list, FarColorer and Temporary panel. I suspect most of them come bundled with Far.
I read somewhere that if you can read Russian, you could get a license for free (I guess it's generally free now). This is supposedly why many Russian competitive programmers use Far Manager (with some plugins) for editing code. This includes Tourist, who I am told is one of the world's best.
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.
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.
And since they couldn’t afford it, they’d write cracks for it, which would end up in the West. The idea was let them get it free, and then the desire to write cracks is reduced.
Far is a fantastic piece of software, with an excellent pedigree.
Same key bindings, look and feel as Norton Commander, with lots more functionality, but added with considerable thought and restraint. Delightful to use and very well done. Not everyone's cup o' tea, granted, but worth taking for a spin if only to see a very faithful reproduction of the grandfather of all two-pane file managers.
I fail to understand how two-panel file managers didn’t become the default. It seems that in the 90s Norton Commander and it’s derivatives were widely used on DOS PCs. They made many file management tasks so much easier. Why don’t we see them around nowadays?
I know that FAR and probably Midnight Commander are still around, but I just don’t see anybody using them.
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.
FAR Manager has been the place I lived as a Windows power user, I remember using it with a highly customized ConEmu which I carried around as a portable installation on a USB drive (on my keychain)
Whenever a relative or friend asked me to troubleshoot some problem on his PC (which was quite often), I plugged that drive in and instantly looked like I probably know what I'm doing.
I remember having plugins for navigating into DBs, archives, FTP, Android ADB filesystems, Windows Registry, processes, MP3 ID3 tags, MTP storage devices etc.
I felt like a monkey trying to type Shakespeare when I bought a Mac and did not have FAR Manager anymore. With fish shell and fzf I fulfilled most of my use cases nowadays on Mac.
Now, if only there was an Everything file search alternative, there really is nothing that matches that on macOS.
I am not a fan of Far Manager, but since this is an orthodox file manager, here are some good alternative GUI managers for Windows: Total Commander, Double Commander, Unreal Commander, FreeCommander XE, MultiCommander.
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 ;-)
How's this better than Midnight Commander? I saw a colleague using Far and we found that, as far as our usage went, both had a similar set of functionality.
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.
Especially since LuaJIT support was added in Far 3 (and far2l Linux port's fork, far2m), I made it to be able to execute a line of Lua code under cursor or in a block of selected text, and print the result (if any) to the editor, turning the editor into something conceptually stronger than a REPL or a command prompt combined.
So now I have two upgrades over command prompt: file-focused, as with Far by default, and Lua-focused.
I've been joking that Far Manager has become my real OS. It also was a source of endless debates with my Linux friend, who insists that everything I can do in Far, he can do in Bash quicker, but that seems true only because he doesn't know Far keyboard shortcuts.