This is really cool though I can't seem to get it to build on my mac. Though the stock OSX terminal is plenty fast for me. Maybe I don't do enough intensive work
Show HN: Alacritty, a GPU-accelerated terminal emulator written in Rust
191–200 of 491 posts
Re: Show HN: Alacritty, a GPU-accelerated terminal emulator written in Rust
#192I really disagree with the authors definition of minimal. Terminal emulators have such a minimal user interface as it is it's a bit boggling that I have to make the case for the following "bloat" that other terminal emulators have. I need scrollback because I do occasionally pick up my mouse and grab things that have scrolled off the screen. Tmux doesn't help with this but maybe there is some magic that I don't know…
Moreover, tmux does its own output parsing, so when you do your `cat 1gb_file.txt` inside tmux inside a terminal, you have two layers of output parsing happening. I can't see how that doesn't impact the performance that is claimed for Alacritty. But perhaps tmux is really fast.
I wouldn't trust a third party application to be part of the performance experience I'm claiming for my own application, though.
Re: Show HN: Alacritty, a GPU-accelerated terminal emulator written in Rust
#193I really disagree with the authors definition of minimal. Terminal emulators have such a minimal user interface as it is it's a bit boggling that I have to make the case for the following "bloat" that other terminal emulators have. I need scrollback because I do occasionally pick up my mouse and grab things that have scrolled off the screen. Tmux doesn't help with this but maybe there is some magic that I don't know…
> Features like ... are better provided by a terminal multiplexer I would strongly argue that this thinking is putting the cart before the horse. I don't use tmux, nor do I want to (though occasionally I have to use screen as a hack to keep programs running on remote servers, and I hate every second of it). Solutions like tmux arguably exist because terminals have poor UIs, and the terminal protocol is too weak to fo…
> Solutions like tmux arguably exist because terminals have poor UIs
Whilst I totally agree with you, I think Tmux is a lot like vim in its power. Along the same note, I'd wager a gTmux, much like gVim would be q real nice way to multiplex terminals when we get the UI to beat the TUI.
Re: Show HN: Alacritty, a GPU-accelerated terminal emulator written in Rust
#194[deleted]
Re: Show HN: Alacritty, a GPU-accelerated terminal emulator written in Rust
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just get used to the keybindings. I find it much faster to search up and yank in tmux than scrolling and dragging to copy stuff.
that as the case may be, the same argument applies to vim (i use vim, with at least some of its keyboard shortcut glory, and love it); it might be faster in a lot of cases, but at the end of the day editors like sublime, atom, brackets, etc all have a much larger user base because people aren't willing to learn
You sure about the user base count?
vim is a lot older and's got a lot more time behind it than all the alternatives you mention.
Re: Show HN: Alacritty, a GPU-accelerated terminal emulator written in Rust
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
Out of curiosity, why do you love iTerm? It's always struck me as kind of ugly (especially its preferences). And AFAIK, the only real feature it has that Terminal.app doesn't (besides the native tmux integration, because I still don't really see the point) is support for apps customizing the 256-color palette on the fly (e.g. the initc capability), and wile I really would like to see Terminal.app gain support for tha…
The coolest feature of recent versions of iTerm is the "Selection respects soft boundaries" feature: with it on, iTerm will detect vim/tmux splits and constrain the selection to just one side of that split. For my workflow, at least, it makes a huge difference. Also, if you start tmux as "tmux -CC" iTerm will open the tmux session in a new window, with GUI tabs for tmux tabs and GUI splits for tmux splits.
I had no idea that soft boundary selection option existed. That's wonderful, thank you!
Re: Show HN: Alacritty, a GPU-accelerated terminal emulator written in Rust
#197Also, Cathode is a terminal made with OpenGl and it's really fast: https://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/01/cathode-vintage-terminal-em...
That link redirects to imgur for me. edit: or it did but now its going to the website.
Copy and paste it in. For some reason the owner redirects traffic from hacker news.
Re: Show HN: Alacritty, a GPU-accelerated terminal emulator written in Rust
#198I really disagree with the authors definition of minimal. Terminal emulators have such a minimal user interface as it is it's a bit boggling that I have to make the case for the following "bloat" that other terminal emulators have. I need scrollback because I do occasionally pick up my mouse and grab things that have scrolled off the screen. Tmux doesn't help with this but maybe there is some magic that I don't know…
I never managed to actually like tmux. It breaks too much of what I'm used to, like mouse wheel scrolling, Ctrl-arrows, ESC in Vim and a lot of other small things. The ESC thing is fixable by configuration, at least, but I really doubt I can make tmux behave like my native terminal.
I'm not quite sure what you expect Ctrl-arrows to do, but I'd be surprised if tmux can't be made to keep that behaviour.
If you spend a lot of time in the terminal, there's a lot of value to be gained from using tmux. It takes some configuration to get value from it, but there is value there.
Re: Show HN: Alacritty, a GPU-accelerated terminal emulator written in Rust
#199I didn't even realize my (iTerm2) terminal emulator wasn't fast until I tried Alacritty. When doing non-intensive tasks, the difference is less one of vision and more a "feel". And it feels SNAPPY. And, as a heavy tmux user, I'm definitely your target audience.
But...the font rendering doesn't look as good as iTerm's, at least not yet.
I suspect I'll be swapping once you're at a public build release.
Re: Show HN: Alacritty, a GPU-accelerated terminal emulator written in Rust
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Performance with large amounts of output is also a concern. Frankly, removing two very important features for a lot of people (me included) and then claiming highest performance feels a bit like cheating.
I respectfully disagree. Alacritty follows the Unix philosophy of doing one thing, and doing it well. I used to think that terminal scrollback and tabs were great ideas -- but switching to tmux changed my mind completely. Tmux is so much more capable for managing your session history. The terminal's tab and scrollback features can never match this. They're just bloat :p
> Alacritty follows the Unix philosophy of doing one thing, and doing it well.
That principle is often misapplied, and I think that's true here, too.
The "do one thing" about Unix is really about composability (e.g. "find" doesn't need to sort because you do "find | sort"), but you don't compose a terminal app with anything.
A terminal app that has terminal features doesn't violate any principles of simplicity.