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Ask HN: Which Linux terminal emulator do you prefer and why?

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Re: Ask HN: Which Linux terminal emulator do you prefer and why?

#21

Post by camgunz »

bediger4000 wrote: post #2

Vanilla xterm. It uses a lot less resources than any other emulator. Thomas Dickey keeps it updated. It has an unusual, but usable scroll bar. You can configure cut-n-paste to help you with command line work. You can change what a "word" is for cutting/copying to include /, ., *, so working with Unix file names is easier.

Agree xterm is a great terminal. It supports Unicode and all kinds of font and style configurations, uses few resources, and is really fast. Personally I found it to be the most responsive, better than (u)rxvt and st.

Re: Ask HN: Which Linux terminal emulator do you prefer and why?

#23

Post by okl »

cjm42 wrote: post #9

xfce4-terminal, because I switched to Xfce when GNOME went on their "reinvent the UI" trek. I was happy with the UI I already had, thanks very much.

Me too, but mostly out of laziness and because its good enough once you change the color scheme, disable the menu bar and reduce font size slightly. Also set a very large scrollback buffer.

Re: Ask HN: Which Linux terminal emulator do you prefer and why?

#27

Post by __d »

bediger4000 wrote: post #2

Vanilla xterm. It uses a lot less resources than any other emulator. Thomas Dickey keeps it updated. It has an unusual, but usable scroll bar. You can configure cut-n-paste to help you with command line work. You can change what a "word" is for cutting/copying to include /, ., *, so working with Unix file names is easier.

I use plain xterm as well. With 6x13 aka 'fixed' bitmap font.

Clean, simple, fast. I don't want background images, or transparency, or beautifully rendered fonts: I want to be able to clearly distinguish characters with minimum mental/visual effort, and pack as many of them into the available screen real-estate as I can see.

I also turn off color highlighting, which I don't find useful (in a shell).

My prompt is a simple '> ': no directory, no git, no venv -- I don't need to have that in my face all day long.

Years ago, I also chose an unusual color scheme: yellow text and dark blue background. This is based on the observation that human visual acuity peaks in the yellow/orange, and troughs in the blue, and so yellow on blue takes the least effort to see.

Re: Ask HN: Which Linux terminal emulator do you prefer and why?

#28

Post by treffer »

At some point I got hooked to kde konsole because it allows you to hide everything: hide the scroll bar, hide the menu, hide the tabs. Nothing but window decoration & a terminal.

Oh and my terminal window is slightly transparent. There is a sweet spot where I can still read e.g. this text through the terminal (if need be) while not getting annoyed by the transparency.

That plus I still have all the abilities of a "fancy" terminal emulator: tabs, large scroll window, hyperlink klicking, ....

Re: Ask HN: Which Linux terminal emulator do you prefer and why?

#29

Post by qbasic_forever »

Alacritty, because the config is simple YAML and it can display with zero window embellishments or other UI. It's great for tiling window managers in particular.

The font rendering is great and you can adjust padding, margin, etc. to tweak readability for your tastes. I'm a fan of plain background with good contrast color, larger than normal font, and a clean one character wide padding around the terminal. It feels a lot like a web browser display. I hate terminals that go for the smallest possible font and super dense output.

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