Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

State of Terminal Emulators in 2025: The Errant Champions

jeffquast.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 283 posts

Re: State of Terminal Emulators in 2025: The Errant Champions

#111

Post by unleaded »

It's interesting that none of the programs commonly known as "terminal emulators" actually emulate a terminal.. we can do that now though. https://zork.net/~st/jottings/Real-VT102-emulation-with-MAME...

I would avoid doing the PTY thing and instead do this (works on WSL if MAME is the windows version):

    $ sudo socat TCP-LISTEN:1234,reuseaddr,fork EXEC:"/sbin/agetty -L - 9600 vt102",pty,setsid,ctty,stderr
    $ mame -nomouse vt102 -rs232 null_modem -bitb socket.localhost:1234
You can do the same thing with a vt220.

I've had an idea to try to write a sort of high-level-ish VT220 emulator that pokes and patches the ROMs and the system to let you control it with the mouse, paste and stuff, lets you just doubleclick it to get a terminal, etc... I forgot about that until seeing this. Nobody would use it for more than 5 minutes but it would be funny.

Re: State of Terminal Emulators in 2025: The Errant Champions

#112

Post by dmd »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #110
dmd wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well iTerm2 now has a #&*%( web browser built in...

Does "calling a system provided-component" (WKWebView) count as "built-in"?

Clicking a link to launch an external web browser: no

Viewing a webview inside the app itself: yes

Re: State of Terminal Emulators in 2025: The Errant Champions

#113

Post by altairprime »

hnlmorg wrote: post #46
alkh wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol, mb, but I don't believe that's the case for Alacritty. As for the Apple Terminal, it is not great

Apple Terminal is a lot like Internet Explorer in the 00s: for power users it’s only purpose is an interface to install something else which doesn’t suck.

As a decrepit old {COMMO} power user, anything that doesn’t give me fully integrated scripting with expect/switch/dialog and a popup script editor, honestly hasn’t been worth investing in further. So I’ve been on Linux console, Putty, and macOS Terminal ever since.

My terminal.app color scheme uses P3 colors on 7% gray rather than the usual sRGB colors so that I can use an OKLCH equidistant palette, and I make extensive use of shift-cmd-up to select and copy “the previous command’s output”. I considered switching for 24-bit color but ultimately I prefer not having to learn a new “rudimentary” app that’s deficient versus my nostalgia just like all the others, and it drastically reduces my stress level when working on other people’s devices that I am proficient in working with an OEM environment.

I occasionally use tabs but for the most part I prefer windows, so that I can drag them around and over/underlapped with other work I’m doing in my GUI. Not a big fan of screen and tmux except as their limited value to me in mitigating ssh disconnects when that’s a concern.

Perhaps your definition of power user is limited to uses aligned with your own?

Re: State of Terminal Emulators in 2025: The Errant Champions

#115

Post by sevg »

klooney wrote: post #105
mort96 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only thing I'm missing from ghostty is scrollback search. It's planned AFAIU, I hope it gets there eventually. Otherwise, ghostty has been pretty good. (I know you can fake scrollback search with tmux. It's not the same.)

There seems to be a contingent that just doesn't use scroll back search, which I find kind of baffling.

I’ve never used scrollback search, and it was a discovery for me that there’s a contingent that are very vocal in their demands for scrollback search.

I can see why someone would feel attached to this feature though.

Mostly I’m looking forward to seeing it implemented so I can stop reading complaints about this being missing in every thread about ghostty!

Re: State of Terminal Emulators in 2025: The Errant Champions

#117

Post by j1elo »

Work had me using the Windows Terminal for the first time ever after a life of developing on Linux. I got immediately hooked on the smart Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V (without needing to use Shift like on Linux!)

For those not knowing, Windows Terminal uses Ctrl+C to abort the current process (as we'd expect) when nothing is selected, but copies when there is a selection. Similarly, Ctrl+V just pastes. So convenient!

Re: State of Terminal Emulators in 2025: The Errant Champions

#118

Post by Imustaskforhelp »

chrysoprace wrote: post #102
Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now the only feature I need in Ghostty is Windows support. I use ghostty on my mac but have you forgot about ctrl + f to find things support in ghostty (I don't think it has ctrl f support iirc right?)

I'm always running tmux so it's not typically a feature I look for, but as you mention it doesn't seem to trigger a find for terminal scrollback. Wezterm doesn't do this either so maybe that's an iTerm thing. I always assume Ctrl keybindings will trigger emacs mode shortcuts in the tty. Update: Windows Terminal doesn't do it either.

I would love to use tmux. I have used yazi in the past and I really liked it but I was barely using it to its fullest potential.

I think I have "skill issue" regarding tmux and I used to use hyprland (recently went to niri) and I just always preferred opening up another terminal I used to use (which was foot back when I was using my own config and it was alacritty on cachy/ idk what was on omarchy for the time I was on omarchy but I don't like omarchy)

Is there actually a way to fix this skill issue, like I want something so simple in start that I just run it and forget and still get decent amount of benefits?

Re: State of Terminal Emulators in 2025: The Errant Champions

#120

Post by dpatterbee »

Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #100
nusaru wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Relevant GitHub issue: https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty/issues/189

> To be completely clear, it’s not on the “IMMEDIATE” roadmap (as noted in the prior comment). It’s absolutely on the roadmap and I even already started some it in a branch. But as a passion project, we prioritize working on whatever we want and this isn’t currently the priority. It’s high on the list but not like.. next release (“immediate”) priority at the time of this comment. I mean I can respect that, personally…

It's planned for 1.3 in March https://ghostty.org/docs/install/release-notes/1-2-0#roadmap
Post reply on HN