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Why do you people use terminal emulators?

by jstx1 4y ago

em-bee 4y ago
the main reason for me is that the command shell retains a history of commands that i used which allows me to efficiently repeat those commands. i can turn a series of commands into a script. also a lot of commands and file operations are faster in a terminal. there are also many commands that don't have a gui equivalent (and there are gui apps that don't have a commandline equivalent. the latter are the reason why we use terminal emulators as opposed to raw terminals(
- jstx1 4y ago
  Oh I get all of these, maybe I have some confusion about the difference between a terminal and a terminal emulator. Take MacOS for example - there's the default Terminal app. It can do all the things you're describing out of the box and I agree that they're useful. (I would call this a terminal, not a terminal emulator <<< I guess that's the part where my terminology is wrong). Then there's the custom setups with kitty, tmux, other extensions etc. My question was what do people get out of the latter that isn't in the former.
  - em-bee 4y ago
    oh, ok. every terminal on a gui is a terminal emulator, because a real terminal is something like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VT420 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VT420 (i used one of those at home in the 90s, directly connected to a modem (so i had to hand dial modem commands))
  - em-bee 4y ago
    basically you are asking what kind of advantages do these alternative terminal emulators have over the default. well, just look at what everyone here is writing about their choice. in part that depends on what the default is because on linux you get a variety of choices. there it often comes down to preference. the defaults change over time and some people prefer to stick with what they had. if it's not that then it's some kind of specific feature. it can be font choice (better default fonts, or an easier way to change the font), tab support or something else. it's not that one terminal is objectively better than another, but a few features that are important for one person but not for another. on macos i occasionally had issues with unicode support for foreign languages in the default terminal.app. so i switched to iTerm. iTerm also has tabs and tmux integration, which are nice extra features. btw tmux is a terminal multiplexer offering features that no terminal application has. the primary one is that it keeps running if i close a window and i can reconnect later. that is very useful for remote connections, but also locally it means i can log out without having to close all my terminal windows. keeping that state for me is very important to make it easier to switch between activities
    - jamessb 4y ago
      To be slightly more explicit, tmux is not a replacement for a terminal emulator, but rather an application that is run inside one: you can open Terminal/iTerm/Kitty/whatever you prefer, then run "tmux new" [1]. [1]: https://github.com/tmux/tmux/wiki/Getting-Started https://github.com/tmux/tmux/wiki/Getting-Started

Why do you people use terminal emulators?

by jstx1 4y ago

Why do you people use terminal emulators?

the main reason for me is that the command shell retains a history of commands that i used which allows me to efficiently repeat those commands. i can turn a series of commands into a script. also a lot of commands and file operations are faster in a terminal. there are also many commands that don't have a gui equivalent (and there are gui apps that don't have a commandline equivalent. the latter are the reason why we use terminal emulators as opposed to raw terminals(

jstx1 4y ago
Oh I get all of these, maybe I have some confusion about the difference between a terminal and a terminal emulator. Take MacOS for example - there's the default Terminal app. It can do all the things you're describing out of the box and I agree that they're useful. (I would call this a terminal, not a terminal emulator <<< I guess that's the part where my terminology is wrong). Then there's the custom setups with kitty, tmux, other extensions etc. My question was what do people get out of the latter that isn't in the former.
- em-bee 4y ago
  oh, ok. every terminal on a gui is a terminal emulator, because a real terminal is something like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VT420 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VT420 (i used one of those at home in the 90s, directly connected to a modem (so i had to hand dial modem commands))
- em-bee 4y ago
  basically you are asking what kind of advantages do these alternative terminal emulators have over the default. well, just look at what everyone here is writing about their choice. in part that depends on what the default is because on linux you get a variety of choices. there it often comes down to preference. the defaults change over time and some people prefer to stick with what they had. if it's not that then it's some kind of specific feature. it can be font choice (better default fonts, or an easier way to change the font), tab support or something else. it's not that one terminal is objectively better than another, but a few features that are important for one person but not for another. on macos i occasionally had issues with unicode support for foreign languages in the default terminal.app. so i switched to iTerm. iTerm also has tabs and tmux integration, which are nice extra features. btw tmux is a terminal multiplexer offering features that no terminal application has. the primary one is that it keeps running if i close a window and i can reconnect later. that is very useful for remote connections, but also locally it means i can log out without having to close all my terminal windows. keeping that state for me is very important to make it easier to switch between activities
  - jamessb 4y ago
    To be slightly more explicit, tmux is not a replacement for a terminal emulator, but rather an application that is run inside one: you can open Terminal/iTerm/Kitty/whatever you prefer, then run "tmux new" [1]. [1]: https://github.com/tmux/tmux/wiki/Getting-Started https://github.com/tmux/tmux/wiki/Getting-Started