far2l vs nnn
far2l
github.comnnn
github.comSide by side
| Figure | far2l | nnn |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| Android | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · File managers | 8.6 (#5) | 8.7 (#4) |
| Spec score · Terminal File Managers | 8.5 (#6) | 8.5 (#7) |
| Archive support | Yes | Yes |
| File operations | The README lists plugins including archive handling, file comparison, image viewing, and text transformations. | It can analyze disk usage, batch rename, launch apps, pick files, and copy, move, delete, archive, and link selections. |
| License | The README identifies the license as GNU/GPLv2. | The GitHub repository identifies the project license as BSD-2-Clause. |
| Linux support | Yes | Yes |
| macOS support | Yes | Yes |
| Platforms | The project describes Linux as its primary platform and says it also works on macOS and BSD, though BSD is not regularly tested. | The project says nnn runs on Linux, macOS, Android through Termux, Cygwin, and WSL, among other environments. |
| Purpose | far2l is a Linux fork of FAR Manager v2. | nnn is a full-featured terminal file manager. |
| Remote file access | Yes | Yes |
| Windows support | No | No |
Plans
In their own words
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.
nnn
nnn is a terminal file manager designed to be small, fast and nearly zero-configuration. It handles copying, moving, deleting, archiving and linking selections, alongside batch renaming, disk-usage analysis, app launching and file picking. Navigation includes contexts, sessions, bookmarks and directory marks, while search options include instant filtering, fuzzy matching, regular expressions and string filters. It provides directory and text previews, and can create, list, extract and mount archives. Plugins can add functions such as live previews, disk mounting, file comparison and uploads. Remote mounts require optional sshfs or rclone dependencies. The project says nnn typically needs less than 3.5 MB of resident memory; it has no configuration file and uses defaults, with optional environment-variable settings. It is free and open source under the BSD-2-Clause license, and is listed for Android, Linux, macOS and Windows. The project offers packages and a statically linked binary, or users can compile it from source.