I’m reconsidering my terminal emulator and was curious what everyone was using.
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XTerm. I used to use rxvt-unicode, but it only supports 256 colors and gave me grief when I tried to get some emacs color theme working. There’s only one thing I miss, which is that rxvt-unicode reflows lines when you resize the terminal, which xterm won’t do. Oh and urxvtc starts very slightly faster, but no big deal.
I also looked at kitty, and I like that the author of that one tries to champion new features, like full keyboard support on par with X11 apps. But it takes noticeably longer to start and the latency also feels worse.
I have to ask. I launch new terminals with Super+Enter, I barely have time to release my key chord, and kitty is already opened. I understand “slower”, but 100% slower than a couple tens milliseconds is still a couple tens of milliseconds. My WM/compositor popping up the window and shell probably take longer by themselves than the difference in launch times between those two.
YMMV depending on what you consider to be noticeable delay & latency, I guess?
Just tried this again. Kitty takes like maybe half a second to start on my machine (maybe yours is faster?). Not sure how to measure this. xterm starts almost instantly. I can type “Super+Enter ls” and it’ll work. Doesn’t work with kitty, the keystrokes just disappear. Is this actually important? Probably not, but it feels annoying. Like slow internet.
I might have imagined the typing latency, since it feels the same as xterm now. Maybe I’m remembering wrong. I was on the old Debian when I last tried this though, so something could have changed.
I use wezterm, but there are many good ones
Love it, works nice in my Mac and Linux PCs.
Unironically: vscode terminal. It’s the terminal that has less bugs when using shift+arrows to select text. I also use PowerShell because bash doesn’t allow text selection with keyboard.
Same. Has anyone found a way to launch VS Code as just the terminal window? I’ve tried hacking around and doing stuff like using Zen Mode with just the terminal displayed, which is close, but I don’t think that can be scripted, unfortunately.
You can open the terminal as if it were any other file, instead of the integrated terminal.
Could you elaborate on this? How do you open the VS Code terminal on its own?
F1 ->
>Terminal: Create New Terminal in Editor AreaAh gotcha. That’s not quite what I’m looking for. That opens a split-pane terminal in an existing window.
What I’m wanting to do is have something like this:
code --terminal-only. That would enable it to be launched from a script or shortcut and function as a standalone terminal application. Unfortunately, however, I’ve looked through VS Code’s command-line options, and nothing like that seems to exist.
Kitty has awesome framerates, easily hitting 90fps pushing 150k - 180k per frame. Alacrity is also dope.
Wezterm, which does everything, with a great developer behind it.
Second choice is Konsole: super solid and great rendering.
Aaand tmux with either of those.
I like my kitty
Anything, but with tmux running inside. You can copy text even in a tty, split the terminal window, detach from and attach to tmux sessions, etc. I will never use a terminal for any moderately complex task without tmux again :)
i never got the copy part right, what configs are you using?
also, can you copy from a remote (ssh) tmux?
Copying in tmux (assuming default keybindings):
- Enter copy mode with Ctrl+b, [
- Position the cursor at the start of the text to be copied, press Ctrl+SPACE to start copying
- Position the cursor at the end of the text, press Alt+w or Ctrl+w to copy into the tmux buffer
- Press Ctrl+b, ] to paste, possibly into different pane :)
By ‘copy’, I meant between different tmux panes/windows.
If you open tmux on your host, split it into two panes and SSH into the server in one of them, then you can use this copy functionality. I’m personally not aware of a way to copy between a remote and local tmux session.
ah yes sorry i meant copy to system clipboard.
i succeed in configuring vim so it uses the system clipboard on both local and remote sessions.
i would like to do the same with tmux, but as you said too, it does not seem to be a way.
You absolutely can. You just have to use a clipboard command as the copy/paste. Add this to your
~/.tmux.confbind-key -T copy-mode-vi y send-keys -X copy-pipe-and-cancel "xsel -i -b" bind-key -T copy-mode-vi Enter send-keys -X copy-pipe-and-cancel "xsel -i -b"or use your favorite cli clipboard command. Note that those are using the vi bindings; you might have to adapt the config.
Tilda, because I could drop it down my screen anytime with one key tap.
I have Guake for passive tasks like music payback or anytime I want a full screen terminal to hold my focus, like when I’m writing in Neovim.
Tillix is my active terminal. Taking notes, active chat sessions, or running a SSH connection. Anything that I want on screen permanently.
Zutty, the Zero-cost Unicode Teletype which the developer describes as “A high-end terminal for low-end systems”.
St with few patches and personal customizations is amazing.
Emacs!
BlackBox for Linux, the UI is very clean and fit so well with the rest of Gnome apps
Tested dozen recently… And nothing was so much better to change the default one of KDE.
Used to urxvt (when I was using tilling vm on desktop pc). Used gnome-terminal when I was on cinnamon. I switched to KDE year or so ago and I’m using Konsole. It really does not matter that much, I only need tab support and 256 colors.
When I’m using a tiling window manager, I use kitty, because I like its speed and support for font ligatures. When I’m using a Desktop Environment like Gnome or KDE I usually don’t use the terminal at all, but if I need it, I use the default emulator.
Silva? Are you Portuguese or Brazilian?
Neither, actually. I don’t know why I call myself silva, but that’s not my real name.
Lol thats a common surname here in Brazil. It means jungle in latin so the priests used to give this surname to converted natives.
Interesting. In English, “Silvan” mean a spirit that lives in the woods. It’s often used in literature as a synonym for “elves.”
Probably the same root
That’s what I was thinking, but I noped out of a linguistics minor after a year when I realized it was never going to turn into “learning a bunch of languages” and was instead spending all your time doing sentance diagramming.
Quase que achei que fosse tuga
kkkkk mais um!
Sorry for the off-topic question, but I’m still trying to wrap my head around basic linux concepts: you use “tiling window manager” and “desktop environment” as if they were mutually exclusive options. What’s the relationship between them?
Thanks!
Window Managers manage windows as the name suggests and control how they are displayed and interacted with. A window manager is one component of a desktop environment which provides other facilities like compositors, task bars, status trays, task switchers, configuration applets, virtual desktops, and perhaps some default applications for basic things like terminal, file management, text editing, connection management, and image viewing. Some desktop environments feature extensive plug-in systems ( extensions ) and vast application ecosystems.
In the early days of Linux, there were no “desktop environments” and you would run a window manager directly over the window server ( eg. X11 ) with applications running directly over the WM. Proprietary UNIX introduced desktop environments like CDE, OpenWindows, and NeXTstep but, as they were proprietary, Linux lacked them. This changed with the advent of KDE and GNOME soon after. These days, the vast majority of Linux users are working with a desktop environment ( probably still one of these two though there are now others ).
A timing window manager in particular is a window manager that allows auto arranging and resizing applications to share the screen ( typically using keyboard commands ). The goal of a tiling window manager is that application views do not overlap and that the full desktop space is used efficiently. A floating window manager in contrast allows windows to overlap and leaves positioning, resizing, visibility, and focus up to the user. The desktop itself may be plainly visible and may even have clickable icons or applets displayed on it. Interaction with windows in a floating window manager is usually done with the mouse. Windows and Mac are examples of the floating metaphor so that is the one most of us are more familiar with. Any given window manager can incorporate both floating and tiling ideas and features but most WMs lean pretty heavily one way or the other.
Technically, a window manager is just a special kind of application. In X11, it is not even required. You can run applications directly without one but, if you run more than one application, you will quickly understand the value of a window manager. The value of a full desktop environment is more a matter of preference. Most people welcome them or consider them essential. Others see DEs as bloat. The middle ground is assembling a desktop experience yourself from a group of applications you select for that purpose from the window manager up.
A really nice reply. Comprehensive, without being loquacious. Most importantly, accurate. Nicely written; replies like this are a joy to come across.
I don’t know if I’m correct, but in my head, a window manager JUST manages windows. Gnome and KDE also manage windows, but they also contain applications for settings, printing, etc. Desktop Environments also have window managers, but they have more applications on top.
So, just to check I understood:
- “[Tiling] Window Managers” are a very specific tool.
- “Desktop Environments” are broader tools that (may?) contain Window Managers.
Now… the next questions (if you have the patience :P) are:
- is is possible to use a Window Manager without a Desktop Environment?
- how does this influence your choose for the terminal emulator? Ó_ò
Thanks for the answers!
- Yes, you can absolutely use a WM without a DE. A DE is usually just a set of preconfigured and pre-installed applications. If you use a WM like i3 etc. you just get something that draws windows, and no settings and bluetooth applications
- It influences my choosing because window managers usually don’t come with a terminal, and you have to manually install a terminal emulator. But on desktop environments I use the default terminal, although I could also install kitty.
Oooh… I see. I didn’t understand how broad the Desktop Env really are. Is not that they manage “a lot of things regarding the desktop and windows”… is just like a bundle of apps.
Now it’s starting to sound like a sub-distro inside the distros, but I think this is a good point to stop bothering you. Thanks again!
For most people, a different desktop environment probably makes a bigger difference than a different distro. They won’t notice things like a different package manager
You’re welcome!
