It's been my observation with my TBHs that they take more active management than a vertical Langstroth. That's quite fun for a new beekeeper, and certainly I prefer the way the bees aren't in the air during inspections as they are in and vertical hive.
As far as disturbing the bees: You have a great head start in the long-hive format. Actually the bees are good natured and don't get disturbed much if you can cultivate work that is gentle, purposeful, precise, and quick. You may even find that you have a little communication with them as livestock, in that they can tell you what's going on by their sound or what they're doing, and they can act sort of relieved when you fix something for them. So "disturbing" the bees is one of the little pleasures of beekeeping.
That said, honey management is more difficult in a long hive. I'm foundationless, and it appeared to work best if, after one use (first white wax + drones), drone comb was moved to the outside edge as the "pantry" ... out of the way where the queen could conveniently lay more drones.
In a long hive, others too have noticed that the bars become sort of mixed honey/pollen/ brood. If I want a couple cups of household honey, I can bring a tupperware and cut out the top of a bar which the bees can easily festoon and re-fill. There are fewer solid bars of all honey.
So from my experience, using a flow frame would be sort of incompatable with a long hive without an queen excluder...the bees might not fill it. But it would be a good experiment.