Once Again, The Default Terminal

hhh · 2016-02-23 02:13:00

Terminator is the most bloated and slowest-to-open terminal available.

That's the consensus of the Team (Sector11 being the exception, he uses it daily).

We're opening discussion of the pros and cons of different terminals again. We did this a while back and terminator was the universal vote, but we think it's worth discussing again. Most likely, any changes we might make as a result of this won't be in the release ISO, so consider this medium-range development.

Assuming #! die-hards won't give up terminator, we're thinking of adding a second/backup terminal, maybe a pre-configured urxvt/~.xresources thing. We're also looking at Geany, it has some terminal quirks, so those are on the table too (xaos52 in da house).

Try to stay on topic, but all opinions and feedback are welcome!

Thanks.

Horizon_Brave · 2016-02-23 03:31:53

Well I use Guake...but it's very gui based, and may also be "bloated" in comparison to other terminals. but I just love the top-down interface, and the ease of customizing it.

tknomanzr · 2016-02-23 04:23:06

Me being me, I actually prefer lightweight undecorated terminals for stuff I like anchored to the desktop most of the time such as MOCP and journalctl -f (atm.). They need to support transparency and respect --geometry directives. I usually have one "working" terminal up as well on the main desktop and I prefer to have a more robust terminal for that work.

I mucked around with numerous terminals in the past and eventually ended up going back to terminator. I still really like Sakura but it does not take --geometry directives so its a no-go for terminals anchored to the desktop.

Keep in mind that I don't necessarily expect anchored terminals to be my x-terminal-emulator as I can autostart them in openbox autostart.

Last edited by tknomanzr (2016-02-23 04:24:50)

brontosaurusrex · 2016-02-23 06:54:54

Combo of terminator and urxvt is working for me. That would work even better if there is a good way to make copy paste behaviour the same for the two (no, I don't know how).

Head_on_a_Stick · 2016-02-23 08:02:30

I vote for rxvt-unicode-256color in daemon-client mode with tmux providing the tabbing and tiling.

I use this in my ~/.zshrc (~/.bashrc for BASH users) to start un un-killable tmux session and attach new windows to any existing sessions automatically:

if [[ -z "$TMUX" ]] ;then
    ID="`tmux ls | grep -vm1 attached | cut -d: -f1`"
    if [[ -z "$ID" ]] ;then
        tmux new-session
    else
        tmux attach-session -t "$ID"
    fi
fi

This means that if I close a terminal window (or even quit the desktop) accidently, it doesn't kill the session and the next terminal I open will have that session running in it

dot|not · 2016-02-23 08:06:21

rxvt-unicode has my vote, even though with the resources I (and most people here in the forums, even the ones with just 2GB of memory) have today, it doesn't really matter. My 'slowest' workhorse, which is the one actually residing in the office, has 12GB of memory and a relatively recent quad-core processing unit. A terminal is the least of my worries.

I don't see the point in using the daemon-mode, but wouldn't be too concerned if we'd go for it.

johnraff · 2016-02-23 08:36:03

dot|not wrote:

I don't see the point in using the daemon-mode...

Agree. I don't think the tiny saving of RAM is worth the extra hassle.

iMBeCil · 2016-02-23 08:39:08

+10 for rxvt-unicode[-256color]. And here is why:
I'm using it with .Xresources theming, to look much like original terminator in BL:

! urxvt settings -------------------------------------------------------------
URxvt*background: #2e3436
URxvt*foreground: #D8D8D8
URxvt*colorUL: #D9752E
URxvt*colorBD: #F3873A

! black
URxvt*color0  : #2E3436
URxvt*color8  : #555753
! red
URxvt*color1  : #CC0000
URxvt*color9  : #EF2929
! green
URxvt*color2  : #4E9A06
URxvt*color10 : #8AE234
! yellow
URxvt*color3  : #C4A000
URxvt*color11 : #FCE94F
! blue
URxvt*color4  : #3465A4
URxvt*color12 : #729FCF
! magenta
URxvt*color5  : #75507B
URxvt*color13 : #AD7FA8
! cyan
URxvt*color6  : #06989A
URxvt*color14 : #34E2E2
! white
URxvt*color7  : #D3D7CF
URxvt*color15 : #EEEEEC

!urxvt fonts: 
URxvt*font: xft:Monospace:pixelsize=16
URxvt*boldFont: xft:Monospace:bold:pixelsize=16
URxvt.letterSpace: -1

!urxvt scrolling options and cursor style:
URxvt*saveLines: 12000
URxvt*scrollstyle: plain
URxvt*scrollBar: false
URxvt*cursorBlink: true
URxvt*cursorUnderline: false

!fade unfocused
URxvt*fading: 5

rxvt-unicode pros:
- small
- fast

rxvt-unicode cons:
- cryptic configuration (at least for beginners, or Ubuntu/Windows refugees; BL should offer some sort of pointers/examples how to configure rxvt; and pointer for easy replacing rxvt with terminator, and configuring it accordingly --> need for bl-terminator metapackage? Is it difficult to make metapackage?)
- doesn't have tabs (I have almost never used that; I prefer tmux)

Speaking of metapackages: another solution is to keep terminator and add options to replace it with nicely configured rxvt-unicode[-256colors]. This calls for bl-rxvt-uncode-metapackage Damn, anybody has pointers/examples, how to write metapackage? I can offer to try to write one, and test it ...

Just my 2cents ...

Last edited by iMBeCil (2016-02-23 08:39:58)

pvsage · 2016-02-23 08:40:04

brontosaurusrex wrote:

Combo of terminator and urxvt is working for me. That would work even better if there is a good way to make copy paste behaviour the same for the two (no, I don't know how).

I think this would remove one of the last barriers to urxvt being a reasonable default terminal for most users. The development gurus here have already demonstrated that urxvt can be configured for clickable URLs; the lack of such in xterm is one of the reasons it was dismissed as a possible default terminal.

My Dream Terminal(TM) would be one that acts like your typical {WM}-terminal (gnome-terminal, mate-terminal, etc.) but also displays w3m-img previews in Ranger. Wouldn't surprise me if urxvt can be configured to suit.

brontosaurusrex · 2016-02-23 09:05:54

@iMBeCil: It has tabs extension, illustration: https://cdn.scrot.moe/images/2016/01/11/reallyarchy.png

p.s. Actually this 4 extensions are probably sane minimum

URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,matcher,font-size,tabbed

and my messy Xresources.

Last edited by brontosaurusrex (2016-02-23 09:12:55)

iMBeCil · 2016-02-23 09:13:06

brontosaurusrex wrote:

@iMBeCil: It has tabs extension, illustration: https://cdn.scrot.moe/images/2016/01/11/reallyarchy.png

Didn't know that, thank for pointing it out.

Nevertheless, I have never used tabs ... Somehow, tmux seems more powerfull, so for me ideal combination is rxvt+tmux (combined with i3wm, it is pleasure to move between several terminals)

brontosaurusrex · 2016-02-23 09:15:12

Sure tmux is more powerfull, it also looks much nicer (than tabs extension), but imho lists under "advanced" usage.

ohnonot · 2016-02-23 10:32:39

i've said it before, i'll say it again: i'm no friend of terminator. the python ui is sluggish.
urxvt pops up instantly, and its way seems to tie in better with our community anyways (or have you seen a thread for terminator color schemes?)

the biggest pro of terminator is the tiling; sure, it's a nifty feature, but is it really necessary?
everything else can be achieved with urxvt (and even more with perl extensions).
urxvt is powerful, customizable, and lightning fast (*).
the color schemes and in fact all options follow a larger standard (xrdb), unlike terminator.
it has less dependencies.

the biggest con of urxvt (and xterm) is that it doesn't have a right click menu, and e.g. copy-pasting is not immediately understandable to new users (but maybe there's perl extension for that, too...).

(*)
on this underpowered netbook:

$ time urxvt -e sleep 1

real	0m1.324s
user	0m0.300s
sys	0m0.010s

$ time terminator -e 'sleep 1'
ConfigBase::load: Unable to open /home/me/.config/terminator/config ([Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/home/me/.config/terminator/config')
PluginRegistry::load_plugins: Importing plugin __init__.py failed: 'module' object has no attribute 'AVAILABLE'

real	0m2.577s
user	0m1.410s
sys	0m0.160s

Horizon_Brave · 2016-02-23 11:20:04

Well Guake has tabs as well but as I stated its most likely not very lightweight. Also from what I've read so far,the problem with terminator seems more to be a problem with xterm? Are the two inseparable? Can you not run the terminator shell program in another "more"like urxvt?
Apologies if this is a silly statement, but the two seem to be two distinct variables

Last edited by Horizon_Brave (2016-02-23 11:21:37)

xaos52 · 2016-02-23 11:20:37

I normally have 3 applications running: emacs, a terminal emulator instance and iceweasel.
I do most of my work in emacs - it serves as my tiled window manager, file manager, editor, ...
I have it open full-screen all the time. Using Alt-Tab to switch to another application.
When I want something to run in a shell I either use eshell - shell implemented in elisp - or I switch to an instance of whatever shell emulator is available.
I have no problem with using terminator as the default terminal emulator since my requirements for an emulator are modest.

Up until shortly I mostly used Debian sid, using gnome-terminal-emulator there.
Since recently I almost exclusively use Bunsenlabs, going with terminator.

dolly · 2016-02-23 19:09:05

Ok, leave "Hydrogen" as is with Terminator. Change to "terminal of choice" for the next release and be finished with this discussion.

Horizon_Brave · 2016-02-23 19:59:00

Is getting rid of Terminator as a default really that critical? To the user who really wants to maximize performance of xterm/terminator, they'll be just fine with downloading their own. Terminator seems to be a good "all around" terminal. For the more power inclined user, it won't hurt them to download and modify their own. Just my two cents

woodape · 2016-02-23 20:09:20

Urxvt is great with tmux, I use this daily, but surely this is advanced usage?

Sakura is a great terminal emulator. It's lighter than terminator, has a right click menu for configuration, does opacity. Its an improvement in terms of resources without sacrificing the ease of configuration - right click to copy and paste and also set options.

lowrider · 2016-02-24 01:53:32

I'm just fine with terminator on BL. When i go debian from scratch (speak netinst) i choose urxvt with python and tabs and messing with .Xresources... but terminator just fits in nicely on #! and also on BL.

kozimodo · 2016-02-24 03:26:37

Horizon_Brave wrote:

Is getting rid of Terminator as a default really that critical? To the user who really wants to maximize performance of xterm/terminator, they'll be just fine with downloading their own. Terminator seems to be a good "all around" terminal. For the more power inclined user, it won't hurt them to download and modify their own. Just my two cents

+1

#1 2016-02-23 02:13:00

Once Again, The Default Terminal

#2 2016-02-23 03:31:53

Re: Once Again, The Default Terminal

#3 2016-02-23 04:23:06

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#4 2016-02-23 06:54:54

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#5 2016-02-23 08:02:30

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#19 2016-02-24 01:53:32

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