Correction, my bad. My File Manager (mfm.tcz) creates sym links like curaga's post above. Not a repeated loop, all at once listing files in a singe command. Of course, they all need to point to the same directory for each action.
asprintf(&command, "mfmexec 'Soft linking...' '%s' 'ln -s -f -v %s %s 2>&1' &", path, file_list, dir_selected);
My File Manager (mfm.tcz) does soft linking but it's beta, just for fun.
Xfe is very nice, very configurable, almost overwhelming to me, yet still lightweight.
emelfm is extremely lightweight and does pretty much anything a basic file manager should.
Would be very surprised if Midnight Commander didn't do linking.
Just started playing around with worker (not in repo), does sym linking too.
Nice to have choices