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Show HN: Alacritty, a GPU-accelerated terminal emulator written in Rust

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371–380 of 491 posts

Re: Show HN: Alacritty, a GPU-accelerated terminal emulator written in Rust

#371
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's too bad notty is licenced under the AGPL. That basically guarantees 0 usage at any sort of bigco.

That is not how Copyleft software licenses work at all. All the AGPL gurantees is that 'Bigco' must contribute back to the community any modifications they make to the software.

That may be the theory, the practice is that the policy of many companies with regard to integrating *GPL code is "not with a ten-foot stick".

Re: Show HN: Alacritty, a GPU-accelerated terminal emulator written in Rust

#372

Why does one need 500fps on terminal ? I don't understand the need for the GPU.

A real 500fps terminal (with 500Hz display) would be nice, because timing jitter would be very low no matter what keyboard autorepeat rate you used. Autorepeat would appear smooth even when the frame rate isn't an integer multiple of the repeat rate. Although in practice something like 120fps is probably sufficient if used with MPV-style motion interpolation.

Re: Show HN: Alacritty, a GPU-accelerated terminal emulator written in Rust

#374
post #350
post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, GPL is fine. AGPL is not.

Why?

You might be thinking of Lesser GPL? It should be immediately obvious why any Bigco would treat the AGPL like an exploding canister of infected blood and sharps.

The AGPL treats web publishing as the same as binary distribution. If a bigco (e.g. Google) used AGPL code as part of a web service (e.g a web-based email client) there is a risk that they'd be required to comply with requests for source code. It's a pretty scary license. I wouldn't touch it... and I run a teeny tiny little speck of a website by comparison.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affero_General_Public_License

Re: Show HN: Alacritty, a GPU-accelerated terminal emulator written in Rust

#375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's company policy and not the fault of the license. EDIT: Unless you're making modifications to the software, the AGPL does not apply. EDIT2: http://www.affero.org/oagf.html#How_does_this_license_treat_... Specifically, the question, "How does this license treat commercial enterprise use over intranets and internal networks?"

You can still make modifications so long as it isn't distributed outside the company.

The problem is that "outside of the company" can be murky. What if the company outsources? What if the company hires contractors? What if the company employs an intern - does the intern now have the right to distribute the software?

These are the legal landmines that BigCos want to avoid, mainly because they're questions that have not really been decided.

Re: Show HN: Alacritty, a GPU-accelerated terminal emulator written in Rust

#376
post #228
post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The AGPL is different from the GPL. The AGPL prevents use at my Bigco (Google) for a number of good reasons.

Use or integration into your products?

"Integration into your products" is too narrow. For example, AGPL may mean that contractors who use company internal web services must be given access to the source code of those services. That's a frightening prospect for companies.

Re: Show HN: Alacritty, a GPU-accelerated terminal emulator written in Rust

#377
post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use or integration into your products?

"Integration into your products" is too narrow. For example, AGPL may mean that contractors who use company internal web services must be given access to the source code of those services. That's a frightening prospect for companies.

I meant use more in "install and use, maybe fix a few bugs", which is what I'd primarily expect for a terminal emulator. It's not the kind of software you're likely going to specially interface with your systems, unless you ship it with your own OS.

Re: Show HN: Alacritty, a GPU-accelerated terminal emulator written in Rust

#378
post #336
post #80

I just want to say that this project is amazing. At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, I think Rust is the most exciting thing that's happening in computing today. This sort of project that plausibly replaces software traditionally written only in C/C++ with something that has performance parity, but is in a language where contributions are relatively accessible and safe, is the most exciting thing even within the boun…

> do you have any plans to use Alacritty to try and advance the state of terminal emulators more generally? I hadn't replied to this because others had already provided all of the info I have. To summarize, the author of notty[0] and I are talking about a collaboration[1]. notty has done a ton of pathfinding in this area on identifying how to add many of these features in a backwards compatible way. I'm really lookin…

As long as we're talking about terminals:

1) TERM is broken: https://www.facebook.com/notes/daniel-colascione/term-is-ter...

2) We need to start adding capabilities to terminfo again --- see the incredible mess in bracketed paste support, true color support, etc.

3) TIOCSTI is a giant truck-sized security hole. We need to stop supporting it.

Re: Show HN: Alacritty, a GPU-accelerated terminal emulator written in Rust

#379
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that was my reaction. > Features like GUI-based configuration, tabs and scrollback are unnecessary. The latter features are better provided by a terminal multiplexer like tmux. This seems kind of like saying "everyone should use their computer the same way I do". I don't use tmux; maybe I should learn to use it. However, I seem to be getting along fine without it, and no scroll back is a deal-breaker for me. Th…

What you said doesn't make any sense to me. Firstly you insinuate that the author is requiring people to interact as they do - this evidently is not the case, a suggestion has even been made on one of many ways to behave differently. Secondly the "I seem to be getting along fine without it" statement pointlessly hampers progress. There is no basis or reasoning for this, instead there is a decision - whimsical by the…

I think it's a cool project, but I personally wouldn't use it because it lacks a feature I expect terminal emulators to have and am not motivated to change how I use my computer. Other people may be happy with this program. If someone implements the feature I want some day, then I might use it as well.

I'm sorry if I came across as overly critical of the project, that wasn't my intent. I just think they're limiting their audience by assuming that a feature that isn't important to the developers is unimportant to users because a workaround exists that the developers are satisfied with. People really don't like to change how they do things, regardless of whether the way they're doing them now is "the right way" or "the best way". Maybe they're making the right decision and everyone really should be using tmux, and if so, great, they'll have have a community of happy users. If their target audience is someone other than me, I'm okay with that.

Re: Show HN: Alacritty, a GPU-accelerated terminal emulator written in Rust

#380
post #341
post #80

I just want to say that this project is amazing. At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, I think Rust is the most exciting thing that's happening in computing today. This sort of project that plausibly replaces software traditionally written only in C/C++ with something that has performance parity, but is in a language where contributions are relatively accessible and safe, is the most exciting thing even within the boun…

I tried the terminal. No scroll bars, no menus, and no highlighting of URLs. Not nearly as functional as the original xterm from the early 90s. It might be super fast, but I've not really been scroll speed limited.

Heh. Does it also have less space than a Nomad?

Point is, that stuff is easy to add in subsequent releases. Its an early project. Give it time to become.

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