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St – A simple terminal implementation for X

st.suckless.org

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Re: St – A simple terminal implementation for X

#51

As much as I love st, I had to stop using it recently. When using a bitmap font in tmux, large amounts of text sent to stdout bring my computer to a standstill. X is using 100% of a single core. I've switched to gnome-terminal and the issue is gone.

This, along with the generally accepted notion that Gnome Terminal is one of the slowest with output, puts the whole minimalism idea under a serious question. "Do one thing, but do it well", the saying goes.

Re: St – A simple terminal implementation for X

#52

As much as I love st, I had to stop using it recently. When using a bitmap font in tmux, large amounts of text sent to stdout bring my computer to a standstill. X is using 100% of a single core. I've switched to gnome-terminal and the issue is gone.

Yikes, consider running that through callgrind or something and sending them the output.

Re: St – A simple terminal implementation for X

#53

Recompiling software to change options is utterly and totally ridiculous

I kind of agree. But, how often do you change your settings after you've found the right ones? A minimalist would see runtime configuration as bloat.

Finding the right settings is a relatively slow process. Also, finding the right values for 80% of the settings is fast, but fiddling with the rest can take time. Trying something new also becomes harder.

For the vast majority of user-facing programs, run-time configuration is a must. A fancy GUI for it might be superfluous; a simple text file / command-line way to set options should always be available.

Re: St – A simple terminal implementation for X

#54

Interesting. I've been wanting a better terminal for some time. rxvt is super buggy, especially with clickable URLs. xfce4-terminal is better but select-to-copy is flaky and doesn't always copy the text I select. I really wanted st to work for me but something is wrong with the character sizing when using Source Code Pro (17pt) as the font. I installed this on my Arch laptop (a hidpi ThinkPad T460s) and something is…

st does this when you don't give it the right font path and config. There is one compiled in, and that's what it's using if you aren't passing a font when you start it. Right now, whatever font it's trying to use doesn't exist, and your screenshot is a typical result of that.

Re: St – A simple terminal implementation for X

#55

I find terminal emulators on Linux to be woefully inadequate after getting used to iTerm2 on OS X. Can anyone recommend a Linux terminal emulator that even comes close in terms of features and performance?

What features do you need in iTerm2 that you find lacking in the Linux terminal emulators you've tried?

I second this out of true curiosity. I have tried and never found any love in my heart for iTerm2. It just feels clunky and bloated to me.

Re: St – A simple terminal implementation for X

#58
post #51

As much as I love st, I had to stop using it recently. When using a bitmap font in tmux, large amounts of text sent to stdout bring my computer to a standstill. X is using 100% of a single core. I've switched to gnome-terminal and the issue is gone.

This, along with the generally accepted notion that Gnome Terminal is one of the slowest with output, puts the whole minimalism idea under a serious question. "Do one thing, but do it well ", the saying goes.

Compared to Terminal.app and iTerm2, VTE (the widget underlying Gnome Terminal) is blazing fast.

Re: St – A simple terminal implementation for X

#59

Interesting. I've been wanting a better terminal for some time. rxvt is super buggy, especially with clickable URLs. xfce4-terminal is better but select-to-copy is flaky and doesn't always copy the text I select. I really wanted st to work for me but something is wrong with the character sizing when using Source Code Pro (17pt) as the font. I installed this on my Arch laptop (a hidpi ThinkPad T460s) and something is…

> I would report this to the author but I don't see any way to do so.

Godspeed, I moved away from all suckless software because the developers are all massive jerks. They'll ignore your bug reports unless you spend an unreasonable amount of time doing intricate debugging, and if you refuse they'll be sure to remember your name and act hostile if you ever go back into their IRC. That's been my experience with Surf and something else (I don't remember what, but it wasn't st) anyways.

Re: St – A simple terminal implementation for X

#60

I find terminal emulators on Linux to be woefully inadequate after getting used to iTerm2 on OS X. Can anyone recommend a Linux terminal emulator that even comes close in terms of features and performance?

Performance? I can't think of a terminal emulator which performs worse than iTerm2 on any platform; other than maybe Cool Retro Term, but I don't think performance was much of a consideration there in the first place.
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