When comparing Far Manager vs Altap Salamander, the Slant community recommends Far Manager for most people. In the question“What are the best file managers for Windows?” Far Manager is ranked 7th while Altap Salamander is ranked 13th. The most important reason people chose Far Manager is:
Far Manager's interface encourages keyboard operation - all actions are easily accessible with keyboard shortcuts, you can quickly record macros for any repeatable action, there are no screen redraws if it is not necessary and that makes everything faster.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Keyboard-oriented
Far Manager's interface encourages keyboard operation - all actions are easily accessible with keyboard shortcuts, you can quickly record macros for any repeatable action, there are no screen redraws if it is not necessary and that makes everything faster.
Pro Open source
Released under BSD license.
Pro Two-panel interface
Pro Many plugins
There are may of them, and you can write them in any languages, including Python.
Pro Editor with syntax highlighting
Every Far feature is also true for its editor. You can setup an external editor if you like, but the included editor works really well and features syntax highlighting.
Pro Easily recorded macros
Hit "Ctrl-." and start recording your boring sequence. Hit "Ctrl-." again to assign it a key. You can use Lua if you need more advanced macros.
Pro Numeric sorting option
E.g. readme-9.txt before readme-10.txt
Pro Extremely fast
Pro Offline context help
Just press F1 when you need it. No internet connection or browser is required.
Pro Themeable
Fully themeable, allowing you to change the colors of every part of the interface.
Pro Scrippting support via LUA
Pro Looks very polished and consistent
Pro Very feature-rich
Pro Very stable, even preview versions
Pro Intuitive two-pane interface
The program features a dual-pane interface that allows you to easily move files between views.
Pro As of July 2019 now freeware
Pro Very fast
No delay is noticable in the user interface.
Pro License is good on multiple machines
Can be used at home and work.
Pro Extensive keyboard shortcut support
Pro Built-in FTP and SFTP
The program has built in support for a variety of common network protocols (such as FTP, FTPS, SCP and SFTP) for file transferring over the internet.
Pro Powerful bookmark support
Easy bookmark usage, e.g., Shift+1 selects the first directory. The bookmarked directories are also available in the usual popups to switch the left/right drive (Alt+F1/F2).
Pro Built-in archive support (zip, rar, etc)
Pro Customizable colors
Different colors can be assigned to compressed files or files with a certain name pattern.
Pro Customizable with own external tools
Pro Copy and move operations can work in background
Pro Automation plugin
Enables user to automate repetitious actions via JScript and VBScript (via windows script engines already installed). There is also support for Perl, PHP, Python and Ruby (Arton's ruby must be installed to have the Action script support)
Pro Encrypt files
Pro Built-in undelete plugin
Cons
Con Blocking operations
Operations such as copy, move, delete, etc are blocking, and you have to wait for them to complete before you can continue.
Though you can cancel the operation with the escape key.
Con Only for Windows
Con Always uses monospace font
Which makes long file names look extremely wide
Con Does not support scrolling with mouse
With plugin
Con Text-based interface
Far Manager does not use a GUI like most windows applications nowadays. This may prove difficult to use for people who are not familiar with text-based user interfaces.
Con Folder shortcuts not available in Alt+F1/F2 menus
Con Slow development
Rarely updates.
Con Text Viewer does not support UTF-8
Con Winscp not available for x64 version
Winscp plugin is available only for x86 version and missing @x64.
Con Hard-coded shortcuts
Shortcuts are hard-coded and therefore can't be changed by the user.
Con Image viewer is basic
Con No tabs in dual panes
There are no tabs available in the dual panes view, which can be a time-saver for some users.
Con No Unicode support
Unicode was promised many years ago, but due to slow development, still nothing.
Con Is only available for Windows
There is no full replacement for Linux or OS X.