4 ms·

Does make me wonder how many people are left that use xterm regularly. I still use it, solely because of muscle memory from when it was one of few options. Bu

by tyingq 4y ago

Does make me wonder how many people are left that use xterm regularly. I still use it, solely because of muscle memory from when it was one of few options. But it seems like most unixy operating systems offer up something else as the default terminal. And xterm being xterm, it's a bit of work to get it running nicely with a decent font and cut/paste behavior. So you have to be pretty deliberate about wanting it.

badsectoracula 4y ago
I use xterm as my only terminal since it has pretty much zero dependencies, opens instantly, it is very responsive, supports everything (it is kind of a defacto standard) and the UI is minimal (just a scrollbar).
- taviso 4y ago
  I use it too, nothing is quite so configurable, feature rich or reliable. I'll admit that XtTranslations are not user friendly, but they are powerful!
- jmclnx 4y ago
  I will do a me-too also. I find xterm works great with tmux plus I can easily change font size on the fly without any issues. Change font sizes on other terminals is either not allowed or sometime (rarely) corrupts the display.
- p_l 4y ago
  There's a menubar and context menu, but one needs to know how to enable them in the first place ;)
UI_at_80x24 4y ago
I use it for cross-site compatibility primarily. I connect to hundreds of various *nix servers. Various Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and AIX. I don't notice font differences much (I'm half blind, so everything is rather large on my screen (and all fonts are kinda fuzzy)). But what I do notice is that xterm is the only program that shows things like ncurses (i.e. mc, tree, etc.), and tmux, and language/locale correctly on everything. I can get 1-2 of the above items but never all of them. (Konsole does a great job too, but xterm opens faster on my i3 setup.) I've manipulated my various dotfiles, and tried multiple combinations but xterm works 100% of the time.
- bitwize 4y ago
  Xterm is a little behind the curve in some areas. For example I'm not sure that it properly handles color emoji -- and many modern hipster dev tools of the sort likely to shit ANSI color codes to stdout without even bothering to check if stdout is a tty, are also prone to using emoji for things like checkmarks for passing tests. (Homebrew, in particular, uses U+1f37a, BEER MUG, to indicate it has completed operations.) But maybe you don't care about that. 90% of the time, I don't.
  - UI_at_80x24 4y ago
    Luckily I haven't encountered that. I'm almost of the opinion that all my servers should have locale LANG set to C and avoid all the UTF-8 headaches. I don't want my servers to be cutesy.
bitwize 4y ago
Xterm is very broadly compatible with VT220 terminals, with some VT320 and VT420 features thrown in. It is a terminal emulator. Other TEs, especially libvte-based ones, are more like crappy xterm emulators. So there are reasons to want xterm, specifically.
- anthk 4y ago
  XTerm has a keyboard locking mode, so X11 tools can't snoop it. Other terms as you say, suck. BTW, does this work under OpenBSD and ksh with "set -o vi"?
  - dgl 4y ago
    This exact variant with no interaction code execution doesn't, but it's possible to use the vi line editing keys via this bug and do something like hide a command before the current cursor position. (OpenBSD's ksh will show a little "<" in that case.)
jstimpfle 4y ago
I still use it, even though I have to configure fonts meticulously, and switching from the default font is a pain (no ctrl+mousewheel trick, can only select between 5 preconfigured fonts). It starts up fast and reads text comparably fast, and it works great with most console programs. It doesn't try to reflow text when resizing, which simply can't be done correctly. Most other terminals try to reflow and it is frequently a mess (last I checked is long ago)... Another reason I like xterm is that it's one of the few left that support bitmap fonts, and on old low-res screens those are much better legible. (On more modern displays with DPI > 150, it starts to become difficult to find large enough bitmap fonts.)
- bitwize 4y ago
  Say 'xterm -fa <your favorite terminal font here>'. Boom, done. You can even use Xft font format, like "Terminus:pixelsize=20" rather then the traditional -blah-terminus-*-20-et-weary-cetera. You can also set .Xresources, but that's a bit more complicated.
  - jstimpfle 4y ago
    I need to switch fonts in the current terminal, not start a new one. So yes, I'm setting fonts in .Xresources. It might not make a huge lot of sense for vector fonts, because I believe you can configure only 1 (can't check now). But for bitmap fonts, you can configure like 5 and then switch between them in the current terminal using control+right click -> select font.
anthk 4y ago
XTerm has a keyboard input locking mode thru the menus, making secure inputting of passwords doable. Not even X11 tools can sniff it.
pmarin 4y ago
Xterm is the only one I have used in Unix since 1996.

by tyingq 4y ago

badsectoracula 4y ago

I use xterm as my only terminal since it has pretty much zero dependencies, opens instantly, it is very responsive, supports everything (it is kind of a defacto standard) and the UI is minimal (just a scrollbar).

taviso 4y ago
I use it too, nothing is quite so configurable, feature rich or reliable. I'll admit that XtTranslations are not user friendly, but they are powerful!
jmclnx 4y ago
I will do a me-too also. I find xterm works great with tmux plus I can easily change font size on the fly without any issues. Change font sizes on other terminals is either not allowed or sometime (rarely) corrupts the display.
p_l 4y ago
There's a menubar and context menu, but one needs to know how to enable them in the first place ;)

UI_at_80x24 4y ago

I use it for cross-site compatibility primarily. I connect to hundreds of various *nix servers. Various Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and AIX. I don't notice font differences much (I'm half blind, so everything is rather large on my screen (and all fonts are kinda fuzzy)). But what I do notice is that xterm is the only program that shows things like ncurses (i.e. mc, tree, etc.), and tmux, and language/locale correctly on everything. I can get 1-2 of the above items but never all of them. (Konsole does a great job too, but xterm opens faster on my i3 setup.) I've manipulated my various dotfiles, and tried multiple combinations but xterm works 100% of the time.

bitwize 4y ago
Xterm is a little behind the curve in some areas. For example I'm not sure that it properly handles color emoji -- and many modern hipster dev tools of the sort likely to shit ANSI color codes to stdout without even bothering to check if stdout is a tty, are also prone to using emoji for things like checkmarks for passing tests. (Homebrew, in particular, uses U+1f37a, BEER MUG, to indicate it has completed operations.) But maybe you don't care about that. 90% of the time, I don't.
- UI_at_80x24 4y ago
  Luckily I haven't encountered that. I'm almost of the opinion that all my servers should have locale LANG set to C and avoid all the UTF-8 headaches. I don't want my servers to be cutesy.

bitwize 4y ago

Xterm is very broadly compatible with VT220 terminals, with some VT320 and VT420 features thrown in. It is a terminal emulator. Other TEs, especially libvte-based ones, are more like crappy xterm emulators. So there are reasons to want xterm, specifically.

anthk 4y ago
XTerm has a keyboard locking mode, so X11 tools can't snoop it. Other terms as you say, suck. BTW, does this work under OpenBSD and ksh with "set -o vi"?
- dgl 4y ago
  This exact variant with no interaction code execution doesn't, but it's possible to use the vi line editing keys via this bug and do something like hide a command before the current cursor position. (OpenBSD's ksh will show a little "<" in that case.)

jstimpfle 4y ago

I still use it, even though I have to configure fonts meticulously, and switching from the default font is a pain (no ctrl+mousewheel trick, can only select between 5 preconfigured fonts). It starts up fast and reads text comparably fast, and it works great with most console programs. It doesn't try to reflow text when resizing, which simply can't be done correctly. Most other terminals try to reflow and it is frequently a mess (last I checked is long ago)... Another reason I like xterm is that it's one of the few left that support bitmap fonts, and on old low-res screens those are much better legible. (On more modern displays with DPI > 150, it starts to become difficult to find large enough bitmap fonts.)

bitwize 4y ago
Say 'xterm -fa <your favorite terminal font here>'. Boom, done. You can even use Xft font format, like "Terminus:pixelsize=20" rather then the traditional -blah-terminus-*-20-et-weary-cetera. You can also set .Xresources, but that's a bit more complicated.
- jstimpfle 4y ago
  I need to switch fonts in the current terminal, not start a new one. So yes, I'm setting fonts in .Xresources. It might not make a huge lot of sense for vector fonts, because I believe you can configure only 1 (can't check now). But for bitmap fonts, you can configure like 5 and then switch between them in the current terminal using control+right click -> select font.

anthk 4y ago

XTerm has a keyboard input locking mode thru the menus, making secure inputting of passwords doable. Not even X11 tools can sniff it.

pmarin 4y ago

Xterm is the only one I have used in Unix since 1996.