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

231–240 of 283 posts

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

#231

Post by kps »

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.

There are *nix terminals that will let you bind shortcuts that don't conflict with terminal control keys. Konsole and KDE stuff in general will let you set Mac-style bindings (with some config effort), though I personally use mlterm.

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

#232

Post by jack_pp »

nsagent wrote: post #230
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.

Maybe you mean it's too much effort, because I'm sure you could. I was taught touch typing on a QWERTY keyboard in the summer between 6th and 7th grade. Last year I switched to Colemak after nearly 30 years of QWERTY.

Oh I have no doubt that I could but I don't see why since linux already does what I need and I don't see any compelling reason to switch. I was just curious to see what all the hype was about with the new m1 CPUs and give it a shot.

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

#233

Post by ciberado »

co_dh wrote: post #214
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 have to warning everyone: Windows terminal with true color , possibly with tmux, is very slow. There is a half second delay from key press to response. I am in a vdi. Your miles varies.

This doesn't correspond to my experience. The terminal is not faster than light, but good enough for my requirements, and I use it both locally and through VNC. May it be a problem with your VDI setup?

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

#234

Post by indigodaddy »

Yizahi wrote: post #208
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 really wish PC manufacturers didn't kill Insert button. It worked just fine for decades with Ctrl-Ins/Shift-Ins, and in every terminal I've tried. But now the button is missing more and more often (thanks HP, I appreciate useless call and share buttons in its place, which don't work anywhere), and fixes need to be invented for a solved problem.

Yeah shift-ins really is the way

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

#235

Post by usrbinbash »

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!

> So convenient!

Running in tmux, marking anything on my terminal immediately puts it into the tmux buffer, without me having to click anything on the keyboard. Pressing middle-mouse pastes it.

THAT is convenience.

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

#236

Post by tom_ »

blueflow wrote: post #222
teo_zero wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't look so convenient to me. If Ctrl+v is bound to paste, how do you insert a verbatim character in the shell? How do you start a block visual selection in Vim? How do you scroll down in emacs?

You don't but you don't notice if you never did anything like that. Half of the keybinds listed by 'stty -a' are a mystery to mankind.

You can unbind the Ctrl+V keymapping if you want, and it behaves as expected in emacs -nw at least. (There's a Ctrl+Shift+V binding set up by default, same as many Unix terminal emulators, so you won't miss out.)

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

#237

Post by officeplant »

nitinreddy88 wrote: post #155
ajross wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

I can hit the middle click for my Trackpoint without leaving the keyboard :3

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

#238

Post by doritosfan84 »

tharos47 wrote: post #213
klooney wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I use ctrl+R for search that way I'm not dependent of a terminal emulator features and can get to work even on random computers. https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/bash.html#index-rev...

I think most people that want this feature want to be able to search through terminal output, not the commands they've previously used.

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

#239

Post by Ghoelian »

inejge wrote: post #175
taftster wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

> it's really convenient to be able send Ctrl-C (break) differently than Cmd-C (copy) Right, and even on Linux you can do it by using the four-fifths forgotten CUA shortcut Ctrl-Insert for copy (and Shift-Insert for paste.) Although I'll admit to using Ctrl-Shift-C/V most of the time.

My keyboard doesn't even have an insert key.

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

#240

Post by doritosfan84 »

sevg wrote: post #115
klooney wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

My use cases are trying to find the one test that failed out of my suite and finding a specific log print when my app is running. Yes, there are other ways to do both of these. Having scrollback search in the terminal is a very convenient option though.
Post reply on HN