When comparing Krusader vs fman, the Slant community recommends Krusader for most people. In the question“What are the best file managers for UNIX-like systems?” Krusader is ranked 9th while fman is ranked 13th.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Great two-pane interface
Pro Folder synchronization
Pro Handles most archives. There is little difference in behaviour between an archive file and a regular folder.
Pro Virtual file systems
Search results as example saved into virtual folder and can be accessed later. All file operations may be performed on items in search results as if they were files in single folder.
Pro All common operations can be done with keyboard efficiently
In addition, shortcuts can be easily renamed.
Unlike Dolphin and many others.
Pro SFTP support
Pro Many operations like copying and moving files can be queued
Long running operations can be queued.
There is no point in doing them in a parallel way, as speed decreases dramatically.
Pro Can view and edit many files
Even editing a file inside a .zip file.
Has hexadecimal viewer embedded for binary files.
Pro Filename association and instant console availability
Pro Multi-rename tool
Pro Searching capabilities and copying/deleting/moving in background
Pro Custom commands can be added to the menu easily
And they can use the current folder, the selected files....
Pro Works on all operating systems
Windows, Mac, and Linux are supported.
Pro Simple to use
Pro Makes finding commands *by name* easy
Pro Slick
Cons
Con KDE dependencies
If you don't use KDE, you'll be forced to install quite a large amount of KDE libraries.
Con New releases are infrequent
It can be seen in https://quickgit.kde.org/?p=krusader.git that maintenance work is done in a continous fashion, but no new releases are provided.
Even though it is perhaps the more feature-rich file manager.
Con Interface can be overwhelming
Con No (text) file viewer
Con No explicit bookmark support for directories
It though remembers the visited directories and allows to search in this list in most-recently used order and by name.
Con Mainly for key-board-orientated users
The interface is most naturally navigated by arrows and keystrokes. The target market is software developers.
Con Has no menu bar
Hence it is not well suited for visually orientated users which find or remember commands by using a mouse and a menu. Even the fman's hero Sublime Text uses a menu bar.
Con Requires email address to download
Doesn't say what it will do with this data. It is in contrast to the new laws in Europe where only necessary information is allowed to be collected. A download should not require an email address.
Con Still quite buggy
So, for example, sorting only is remembered if triggered by command and not be clicking the table column header using the mouse.
Con Settings can't be found by the GUI
You need to know which files to edit.
Con Default dark theme
No choice between dull-dark or fresh-light.
Con No portable bundle available
On Windows only a net-installer is available.
