elio vs far2l
elio
elio-fm.github.iofar2l
github.comSide by side
| Figure | elio | far2l |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Terminal File Managers | 8.5 (#5) | 8.5 (#6) |
| Spec score · File managers | 8.2 (#13) | 8.6 (#5) |
| Archive support | Yes | Yes |
| File operations | It supports creating and extracting common archive formats, duplicate finding, and trashing, restoring, or permanently deleting files. | The README lists plugins including archive handling, file comparison, image viewing, and text transformations. |
| Linux support | Yes | Yes |
| macOS support | Yes | Yes |
| Purpose | elio is a terminal file manager with rich previews, inline images, bulk actions, and trash support. | far2l is a Linux fork of FAR Manager v2. |
| Remote file access | Yes | Yes |
| Windows support | Yes | No |
Plans
In their own words
elio
elio is a free, open-source terminal file manager for Linux, macOS, Windows, and self-hosted use. Its Places, Files, and Preview panes offer grid and list views, with keyboard and mouse navigation. It previews text, code, documents, archives, media, and other file types; supported terminals can display images inline. File operations include creating and extracting common archives, finding duplicates, and trashing, restoring, or permanently deleting items. Remote file access is supported. Shell wrappers for bash, zsh, fish, and Nushell can return the shell to the browsed directory when elio closes, and an optional zoxide integration opens a picker using recorded directory history. It works without extra preview tools; optional Poppler, FFmpeg, resvg, and 7-Zip tools add preview and archive capabilities. Installation methods are listed for several Linux distributions, macOS through Homebrew, FreeBSD, and Cargo. elio can be configured as a file chooser on Linux and FreeBSD.
far2l
far2l is a free Linux port of FAR Manager v2, with macOS support also listed. It offers graphical wxWidgets and SDL interfaces as well as terminal backends, whose dependencies and keyboard support vary. Its NetRocks plugin supports remote access through SFTP, SCP, SHELL, FTP, FTPS, SMB, NFS, WebDAV, and AWS S3. Other listed plugins handle archives, file comparison, a calculator, image viewing, Git gutter, Python scripting, and text transformations. Python plugin support is optional and requires the relevant Python development packages when building. Installation options include Debian and Ubuntu packages, Homebrew, source builds, and Docker. The project identifies far2l as GNU/GPLv2 software, but labels it beta and advises using it at one's own risk. It recommends checking out a stable release tag because the master branch is considered unstable. The compact Homebrew TTY build lacks Python plugins and SMB support in NetRocks. The project lists English, Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian as valid translations; other languages need substantial correction.