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State of Terminal Emulators in 2025: The Errant Champions

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

#151

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

unleaded wrote: post #111

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 -nomou…

This also looks closer to the original with some shaders to add pincushion distortion and Gaussian scanlines.

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

#152

Post by krackers »

alwillis wrote: post #16
bartvk wrote: post #11

The terminal that comes with macOS version ends on the 29th place in the results.

Yeah… Apple hasn't done much with Terminal.app since they inherited it from NeXT back in the late '90s. FWIW, it did get Powerline support and 24-bit color in macOS 26.

In 10.10 they added scroll emulation and inline find.

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

#153

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

shirro wrote: post #139

Terminal emulators are caught between emulating terminals and teletypes of the past and implementing new features and unicode is one of the struggles. The way most terminals and wcwidth handle the width of characters sometimes is not correct but preserving behavior is important for compatibility. It is possible that its just not worth trying to handle all unicode perfectly in a terminal. Its pretty good for legacy st…

For glyph width, there are codepoints classified as ambiguous width. These are mostly narrow pre-emoji symbols that have been extended with an alternate emoji representation. There's no way to predict what their width will be, even with explicit variation selectors which might just be ignored.

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

#154

Post by taftster »

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #132
j1elo wrote: post #117

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!

Mac terminals yield a similar benefit, with the systemwide copy/paste Cmd+C/V not overlapping with Ctrl+C/V. Being used to that, Linux terminals become rather annoying. Yes there's other ways under Linux, but they don't have 25+ years of muscle memory associated with them, and so when the key shortcuts don't work as expected it's like nails on a chalkboard.

I really do like Cmd key usage for any terminal in Mac. The ability to send Ctrl+C differently than Cmd+C in a Mac is joyous.

However, for most all other applications in Mac, I dislike the Mac command key. Especially in IDEs like vscode, etc.

And I really hate that the actual Ctrl key on a Mac is in the wrong place, having swapped places with Fn. It's like the first thing I have to remember to do on each Mac setup, swap those two keys.

Because I'm toggling between mac/windows/linux all day long, my poor muscle memory is always confused. And it would be nice if this could be unified. Unfortunately, I'm guessing it would have to be solved more by Apple than by Microsoft or Linux.

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

#155

Post by nitinreddy88 »

ajross wrote: post #147
j1elo wrote: post #117

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!

> I got immediately hooked on the smart Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V (without needing to use Shift like on Linux!) You, uh, never tried middle clicking?

So now we are moving away from Keyboard only Vim/Terminal thing to mouse for pasting?

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

#156

Post by taftster »

computably wrote: post #148
jack_pp wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh, shortcut muscle memory is the reason I returned my Mac mini one week after trying it. I sure am not gonna remap my brain for apple after 20 years of Linux and windows.

It's easy and reasonably quick to set up key remapping (via Karabiner).

Yes, but specifically in the context of Terminals (as discussed in the original article), it's really convenient to be able send Ctrl-C (break) differently than Cmd-C (copy).

So yes keyboard remapping is an option. But there's just differences you can't remap because of the extra meta keys on Mac (and I guess on Windows too, with the Copilot or Start keys in play).

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

#157

Post by mongol »

j1elo wrote: post #117

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!

This is genious. It is one of the most annoying things remaining in the Linux desktop and I often press Shift-Ctrl-C in the browser by mistake, opening up the dev tools in the process, while intending to copy.

Are there any legitimate reasons to send Ctrl-C except to abort, that this could interfer with?

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

#158

Post by DaSHacka »

stefanha wrote: post #126
j1elo wrote: post #117

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!

In Linux (Wayland) you can copy text from the terminal without pressing Ctrl+C at all. Just select the text. To paste it in another Window, press the middle mouse button. This is called the Primary Selection and is separate from the Clipboard (Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V). IMO the Primary Selection is more convenient than the Clipboard.

Isn't this an X11-ism? I dont believe this is Wayland-specific

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

#160

Post by mongol »

h3x4d3c4 wrote: post #150
j1elo wrote: post #117

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!

Not sure if this was available from the beginning, but Ghostty has the ability to do exactly that with what they call "performable" keybindings https://ghostty.org/docs/config/keybind#performable: >

Hope Kovid Goyal gets inspired by this
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