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Terminals Are Sexy

terminalsare.sexy

11–20 of 84 posts

Re: Terminals Are Sexy

#11

This is a lot to take in. Not sure if you're the author, OP, but in case the author is reading: Where would you suggest someone starts? (Note: Don't answer here! Use your answer to shape the organization of information on the site!) For example, I use ZSH. Should I switch to fish? The list suggests I'd be sacrificing power and the ability to write scripts but gaining, uh, intelligence and user-friendliness? Is that t…

There are only so many adjectives in circulation.

More seriously: it’s hard to put together a list like this because so many things are subjective. Maybe you prefer fish because it gets rid of some of the dumb things required for a POSIX-compatible shell, but I prefer zsh because it has every feature and the kitchen sink. I don’t know, and neither does the person putting together the list.

Re: Terminals Are Sexy

#12

I guess I'm the last of the tcsh troglodytes. C-shell derivatives don't even get mentioned in these things to say "don't use it" anymore.

tcsh was the thing to use back in the days of multiuser systems and ytalk. Knowing when your friends were logged, and command correction were killer.

I’m still happy that macs shipped with tcsh as default for a while.

But I switched to bash when I stopped carrying enough to switch the default shell.

Maybe I’ll switch to fish. I do love its snarky tagline.

Re: Terminals Are Sexy

#13
post #7

http://linuxbrew.sh/ but… why? We have distributions that are providing perfectly packaged things like Debian/Arch/RedHat. I find already Homebrew hacky on macOS so why porting it on Linux distributions :D Is there anyone on HN using it, I'd be curious to know what are the advantages.

It's for people who don't have root access to a remote terminal (super computer users, generally) but want more up to date packages.

It's also useful for people who do have root access to a terminal, remote or otherwise, but want more up-to-date packages.

Some packages (my favorite example is youtube-dl) are useless if they're not up-to-date. And sometimes the new version has a feature that's really important to you.

I'm using it for ripgrep and node, for instance. ripgrep isn't available in apt, and the node version in apt is incredibly outdated.

There's a reason most software these days tells you to curl an installer and pipe it to bash, and that's because distro package managers never have the latest version.

Here's ripgrep's apt installation instructions:

    curl -LO https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep/releases/download/0.10.0/ripgrep_0.10.0_amd64.deb
    sudo dpkg -i ripgrep_0.10.0_amd64.deb
There's no way I'm memorizing that. I'll have to google 'ripgrep' copy/paste it from the readme each time.

Linuxbrew is just so much easier:

    brew install ripgrep

Re: Terminals Are Sexy

#17
It mentions TotalTerminal, which hasn't been properly supported since OS X 10.10, and outright doesn't work on versions of macOS newer than 10.12.

I really miss TotalTerminal. I've been forced to switch to iTerm, the only other way I can find to get a hotkey terminal, but it's an extremely noticeable difference to switch from the overall fastest terminal to the overall slowest:

https://danluu.com/term-latency/

Re: Terminals Are Sexy

#18
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's for people who don't have root access to a remote terminal (super computer users, generally) but want more up to date packages.

It's also useful for people who do have root access to a terminal, remote or otherwise, but want more up-to-date packages. Some packages (my favorite example is youtube-dl) are useless if they're not up-to-date. And sometimes the new version has a feature that's really important to you. I'm using it for ripgrep and node, for instance. ripgrep isn't available in apt, and the node version in apt is incredibly outdated.…

youtube-dl is on PyPI https://pypi.org/project/youtube_dl/

Re: Terminals Are Sexy

#19
Every time I encounter a tmux recommendation it has me pondering whether it's worth learning minicom.

When I first read the author's rationale for tmux it rubbed me the wrong way, because the main feature they dismiss as cruft- the ability to use it as a terminal emulator for a serial port - is something I still find myself using from time to time.

Is tmux really so much nicer than screen it's worth learning minicom?

Re: Terminals Are Sexy

#20

Every time I encounter a tmux recommendation it has me pondering whether it's worth learning minicom. When I first read the author's rationale for tmux it rubbed me the wrong way, because the main feature they dismiss as cruft- the ability to use it as a terminal emulator for a serial port - is something I still find myself using from time to time. Is tmux really so much nicer than screen it's worth learning minicom?

Matter of preference. I use tmux as a multiplexer and minicom for serial consoles. Mostly because minicom works out of the box more frequently than screen does, even with proper baud rate and other options set sometimes screen just shits the bed when used for serial. Never had any issues with minicom, it just works.
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