What is the crowd's opinion of Far Manager?

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As a huge fan of FAR Manager (which is Windows only and which I miss on other platforms), here's how it does it:

> You can't switch fast between cmdline and file browsing

You are always in command line. Since it doesn't use letter keys (e.g. Vim-style) for navigation, there're no conflicts. Command line editing is much more limited than readline-like capabilities in most UNIX tools, so it's not everyone's cup of tea.

> you can't send file selections or paths between instances(or tabs) (or clipboard)

Selection can be copied to the clipboard with standard Ctrl+C combo; temporary panels can be created and selection can be "copied" there; It is also possible to populate a temp panel from search results or even from some command output. Panel contents can be saved to a file or loaded from a file.

> if you have a long list of files they become tedious to navigate through

"Fast find" function (Enabled if Alt is held down) allows to start search in current folder by name part (or a pattern) and cycle between matches. One also can select files by pattern, of course (the pattern syntax is more limited than glob expressions, but allows for multiple patterns, exclusions etc.).

For some reason, "orthodox" dual pane file managers are a rare thing on UNIXes (Midnight Commander and vifm are two rare instances), even though they are perfect for file operations like copying or moving, comparing files/folders, represent things like clipboard well, etc. Usually an advice is to use utils like tmux to emulate multiple panes, but that doesn't simplify interaction between panes at all. Client-server architecture (like one lf has) is a good approach, but even there one needs to 1) "copy" selection 2) switch to different pane via tmux means; 3) "paste" the selection there. Which is more tedious than a simple "copy" operation user (e.g. myself =)) really wanted, IMHO.