5 ms·

It still doesnt compare well to iterm2. So many features missing. However, may be in a few years they could catch up ?

by je42 6y ago

1_player 6y ago
Not even Linux has a terminal as good as iTerm2, yet funnily enough Windows Terminal is the closest one in terms of eye candy and ergonomicity. I've gone crazy trying to find a good, maintained GNOME terminal with good implementation of Smart Copy (Ctrl-C copies if there's a selection, which is unnecessary under OSX) and some semblance of UI. Kitty was the best but it has no UI, which means you need a cheatsheet for the first month of usage to remember how the heck to access the scrollback buffer when you're doing some late night server debugging. Windows Terminal has GPU acceleration, splits, a good implementation of Smart Copy, the fact that it does both WSL2 and PowerShell is pretty neat. No tmux integration yet, but I don't use tmux personally.
- wayneftw 6y ago
  > Ctrl-C copies if there's a selection, which is unnecessary under OSX That's because macOS uses a wholly different keyboard shortcut for copy which is only a standard for Apple. The rest of the world uses the IBM CUA standard at their core. On a Linux desktop, you use `Ctrl+Shift+C` to copy when in the terminal. Alternatively, you can re-bind Super+C and Super+V to copy and paste - then it's just like your Mac. But I wouldn't do that [0]. Macs have all sorts of inconsistencies and hardships for keyboard users. For instance, open the `About this Mac` window (or any app running in the menubar which is not a System Preferences app) and then move focus away from that program. Now try to use the keyboard to switch back to it. You can't. The only way you can do that is by starting `About this Mac` over again via Spotlight or by focusing on the menu (Fn+Ctrl+F2) to restart it. Aside from that, if you don't want to memorize keyboard shortcuts on your Mac you have to at least memorize the cryptic symbols that they show in the program menus. A sane OS shows the same words that are typically printed on a keyboard (Ctrl+Shift+Alt+Esc) whereas macOS shows you a caret symbol, a long up arrow arrow symbol, a lambda symbol or the "Escape" symbol that looks too much like the international symbol for the power button... and then they don't print those symbols anywhere on the laptop's keyboard. Those symbols are only printed on the external Mac keyboards, not the ones that come with your Macbook. [0] Macs have so many limitations. You can't even easily change the mouse pointer color from black to white without buying a third party program - and even then - that program didn't exist for a long, long time. I've tried to force my Mac to be an OS that I like by getting rid of the hideous global menu bar and replacing the brain-dead dock with uBar, using Witch instead of Cmd+Tab, using Karabiner to modify all the keyboard shortcuts and so forth and so on... It's not worth it and things will break often. So now I just use it the way it was intended (but only when I have to - I vastly prefer XFCE and Linux).
  - francisl 6y ago
    On macOs, it's the same shortcuts as Emacs. Except the `ctrl+x+[other]` uses the command key. IMO its significantly superior for programming. It's also the reason there is less key on the keyboard, it's simply more efficient. Plus, you have the benefits of having the same bindings in all the apps. Either it's the terminal, your mail client or your IDE. `cmd+s` or `ctrl+x` or `ctrl+q` or name it, always do the same thing. That can't be said for any other desktop. I know you can configure Gnome to have emacs keybinds, but it's not the same and many apps break the users configured.
    - wayneftw 6y ago
      > That can't be said for any other desktop. The vast, vast majority of my Linux and Windows desktop apps share the same core keyboard shortcuts. `Ctrl+S` is always save, `Ctrl+X always cuts and `Ctrl+W` always closes the current window. The terminal is one program that doesn't - but that's fine with me because I don't think of it as just another program - it's more like a wholly different operating system or subsystem. Aside from that, the amount of work I have to do with memorizing extra keyboard shortcuts like `Ctrl+Shift+C` for the terminal is still overall less than what I'd have to do on a Mac. I can operate the entirety of Windows or XFCE with just a few shortcuts that I've memorized (or not) while macOS will have you using the mouse or memorizing hundreds of distinct shortcuts - one for each separate function. Even something simple like switching windows - on a Mac you have to memorize 2 separate shortcuts - one for switching between programs and another for switching between windows in that program. Macs also don't have keyboard acceleration via the "Alt key + underlined letter in context menu." They also don't have a dedicated right-click key. These are super useful since I can hit a key to bring up a menu and then hit another key to activate a menu item - no memorization required. I've never seen anyone operate a Mac with just their keyboard. Anyone I've ever observed on a Mac used the touchpad very heavily with low efficiency.
- je42 6y ago
  Yeah, same here. also went on terminal search for linux. In the end Terminator won over kitty for me. Because Terminator had better (simpler to use) pane support. Unfortunately, it doesnt have all of the iterm2 pane features :(
- mariusor 6y ago
  I think Tilix is the best GTK3 terminal on linux. I am not sure about its development status though, I seem to remember its maintainer wanting to stop working on it at one point, but the github history seems active enough.
  - 1_player 6y ago
    Agreed, but it has a buggy implementation of Smart Copy, so I had to use something else
    - mariusor 6y ago
      Could you please tell me what you mean by buggy smart copy? I don't think I know the term.
kyriakos 6y ago
Windows terminal seems to have everything I need. What features are missing I'm reall curious what I could be missing and not being aware
- je42 6y ago
  - ui to configure options. currently it is editing json - back then i was missing, pane zoom (only recently got added). - looking at the docs, i think cycling through zoomed / unzoomed panes is stil not yet there. i might be wrong. - configuring how the split lines looks of the terminal. - moving panes to other tabs found the ticket around panes: https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/issues/1000 https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/issues/1000 there is quite some todo left.

It still doesnt compare well to iterm2. So many features missing. However, may be in a few years they could catch up ?

by je42 6y ago

It still doesnt compare well to iterm2. So many features missing. However, may be in a few years they could catch up ?

Not even Linux has a terminal as good as iTerm2, yet funnily enough Windows Terminal is the closest one in terms of eye candy and ergonomicity. I've gone crazy trying to find a good, maintained GNOME terminal with good implementation of Smart Copy (Ctrl-C copies if there's a selection, which is unnecessary under OSX) and some semblance of UI. Kitty was the best but it has no UI, which means you need a cheatsheet for the first month of usage to remember how the heck to access the scrollback buffer when you're doing some late night server debugging. Windows Terminal has GPU acceleration, splits, a good implementation of Smart Copy, the fact that it does both WSL2 and PowerShell is pretty neat. No tmux integration yet, but I don't use tmux personally.

wayneftw 6y ago
> Ctrl-C copies if there's a selection, which is unnecessary under OSX That's because macOS uses a wholly different keyboard shortcut for copy which is only a standard for Apple. The rest of the world uses the IBM CUA standard at their core. On a Linux desktop, you use `Ctrl+Shift+C` to copy when in the terminal. Alternatively, you can re-bind Super+C and Super+V to copy and paste - then it's just like your Mac. But I wouldn't do that [0]. Macs have all sorts of inconsistencies and hardships for keyboard users. For instance, open the `About this Mac` window (or any app running in the menubar which is not a System Preferences app) and then move focus away from that program. Now try to use the keyboard to switch back to it. You can't. The only way you can do that is by starting `About this Mac` over again via Spotlight or by focusing on the menu (Fn+Ctrl+F2) to restart it. Aside from that, if you don't want to memorize keyboard shortcuts on your Mac you have to at least memorize the cryptic symbols that they show in the program menus. A sane OS shows the same words that are typically printed on a keyboard (Ctrl+Shift+Alt+Esc) whereas macOS shows you a caret symbol, a long up arrow arrow symbol, a lambda symbol or the "Escape" symbol that looks too much like the international symbol for the power button... and then they don't print those symbols anywhere on the laptop's keyboard. Those symbols are only printed on the external Mac keyboards, not the ones that come with your Macbook. [0] Macs have so many limitations. You can't even easily change the mouse pointer color from black to white without buying a third party program - and even then - that program didn't exist for a long, long time. I've tried to force my Mac to be an OS that I like by getting rid of the hideous global menu bar and replacing the brain-dead dock with uBar, using Witch instead of Cmd+Tab, using Karabiner to modify all the keyboard shortcuts and so forth and so on... It's not worth it and things will break often. So now I just use it the way it was intended (but only when I have to - I vastly prefer XFCE and Linux).
- francisl 6y ago
  On macOs, it's the same shortcuts as Emacs. Except the `ctrl+x+[other]` uses the command key. IMO its significantly superior for programming. It's also the reason there is less key on the keyboard, it's simply more efficient. Plus, you have the benefits of having the same bindings in all the apps. Either it's the terminal, your mail client or your IDE. `cmd+s` or `ctrl+x` or `ctrl+q` or name it, always do the same thing. That can't be said for any other desktop. I know you can configure Gnome to have emacs keybinds, but it's not the same and many apps break the users configured.
  - wayneftw 6y ago
    > That can't be said for any other desktop. The vast, vast majority of my Linux and Windows desktop apps share the same core keyboard shortcuts. `Ctrl+S` is always save, `Ctrl+X always cuts and `Ctrl+W` always closes the current window. The terminal is one program that doesn't - but that's fine with me because I don't think of it as just another program - it's more like a wholly different operating system or subsystem. Aside from that, the amount of work I have to do with memorizing extra keyboard shortcuts like `Ctrl+Shift+C` for the terminal is still overall less than what I'd have to do on a Mac. I can operate the entirety of Windows or XFCE with just a few shortcuts that I've memorized (or not) while macOS will have you using the mouse or memorizing hundreds of distinct shortcuts - one for each separate function. Even something simple like switching windows - on a Mac you have to memorize 2 separate shortcuts - one for switching between programs and another for switching between windows in that program. Macs also don't have keyboard acceleration via the "Alt key + underlined letter in context menu." They also don't have a dedicated right-click key. These are super useful since I can hit a key to bring up a menu and then hit another key to activate a menu item - no memorization required. I've never seen anyone operate a Mac with just their keyboard. Anyone I've ever observed on a Mac used the touchpad very heavily with low efficiency.
je42 6y ago
Yeah, same here. also went on terminal search for linux. In the end Terminator won over kitty for me. Because Terminator had better (simpler to use) pane support. Unfortunately, it doesnt have all of the iterm2 pane features :(
mariusor 6y ago
I think Tilix is the best GTK3 terminal on linux. I am not sure about its development status though, I seem to remember its maintainer wanting to stop working on it at one point, but the github history seems active enough.
- 1_player 6y ago
  Agreed, but it has a buggy implementation of Smart Copy, so I had to use something else
  - mariusor 6y ago
    Could you please tell me what you mean by buggy smart copy? I don't think I know the term.

kyriakos 6y ago

Windows terminal seems to have everything I need. What features are missing I'm reall curious what I could be missing and not being aware

je42 6y ago
- ui to configure options. currently it is editing json - back then i was missing, pane zoom (only recently got added). - looking at the docs, i think cycling through zoomed / unzoomed panes is stil not yet there. i might be wrong. - configuring how the split lines looks of the terminal. - moving panes to other tabs found the ticket around panes: https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/issues/1000 https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/issues/1000 there is quite some todo left.