6 ms·

Tabby: A terminal for a more modern age

41 points by nateb2022 3y ago

cassianoleal 3y ago
iTerm2 is a great terminal for macOS. I use it extensively every day. Despite that, I would gladly try out other terminals because it's fun and because I'm always open to finding something superior to even the great tools I use. That said, there is exactly 1 feature that seems to only exist in iTerm2, and until another terminal emulator appears that has it, I'm staying put: tmux control mode. https://github.com/Eugeny/tabby/issues/2715 https://github.com/Eugeny/tabby/issues/2715
- joshstrange 3y ago
  I don’t use that feature often but it sure is nice. It will take a lot to move me away from iTerm 2. I’m incredibly happy with it and it’s rock solid (and fast).
- square_usual 3y ago
  If you're not married to it being in tmux, you can use wezterm's SSH integration will open new tabs and panes in your current SSH session, which is most of what I use iTerm's tmux mode for.
  - cassianoleal 3y ago
    I use it for that + session persistence. The latter is as important as the former to me. I imagine wezterm's doesn't do that, is that right? I remember trying it out a while back and not liking something. IIRC I found the configuration pretty arcane and hard to grok but I could be wrong. Also it could have improved since. It was a while ago.
- michaelsbradley 3y ago
  I used iTerm2 on a daily basis for many years, but started using Kitty in late 2021 and now prefer it: https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/ https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/
  - inferiorhuman 3y ago
    I recently tried both Alacritty and Kitty out of curiosity and went back to iTerm ASAP. For me, on OSX, iTerm is the only one that gets the font handling right.
    - michaelsbradley 3y ago
      I downloaded/installed SF Mono, Noto Sans Symbols, and Noto Sans Symbols 2, and added this to ~/.config/kitty/kitty.conf: font_family SF Mono Looks great on my mac retina laptop and my iMac hooked to a 4k monitor. But, depending on what you're doing with fonts, iTerm could be better suited to your tastes, sure.
      - inferiorhuman 3y ago
        Yes, I know how to edit the config file. Jesus. The problem with Alacritty is that there is no (documented) font fallback and the author's slept on that for a few years. The (main) problem with Kitty is that font selection via font_family doesn't work. The author says it works for him, with the font I was using, so I left it at that. If by "better suited to your tastes" you mean is able to find fonts, then, yes iTerm is better suited to my tastes. I've a few ideas as to why the author wasn't able to repro the issue but no real reason to dig any deeper because iTerm works for me. I've rotated through Fira Code, Source Code Pro, and now I'm on IBM Plex Mono. iTerm just works for me without having to debug anything or wade through an issue tracker.
        tsuujin 3y ago
        I’ve been using kitty for a few months now as my primary editor and have tried out about a dozen coding fonts because I think they’re neat, I’ve never had an issue getting kitty to find and load them.
    - alwillis 3y ago
      WezTerm [1] gets font handling correct if you want font fallback, etc. [1]: https://wezfurlong.org/wezterm/config/fonts.html https://wezfurlong.org/wezterm/config/fonts.html
- E39M5S62 3y ago
  I wrote a terminal-agnostic approximation of that called tmuxc - https://github.com/zdykstra/tmuxc https://github.com/zdykstra/tmuxc . It's very much tailored my exact workflow, mainly because nobody else seems interested in it. With a bit of hacking around you could probably make it work on macOS. I use it on both Linux and HaikuOS.
  - jacknews 3y ago
    I must be missing something fundamental. tmux is a terminal multiplexer, as in you get to run multiple virtual terminals over a single actual terminal (eg ssh). And then tmuxc breaks these virtual terminals out into actual terminals? Why do you need tmux at all in that case, just fire up a bunch of terminals?
    - E39M5S62 3y ago
      tmux, for me, is about session persistence. I run multiple tmux sessions on a bastion host at work. tmuxc lets me reconnect to them each morning and then move them around my monitors as I see fit. I can hit a single key combination and have a new terminal open up with a shell on my bastion host - or any other host that I have a tmux/tmuxc session on.
Jarlakxen 3y ago
I used it almost daily, coming from tilix, it's great but I have some weird bug with ohmyzsh and split panels
abnercoimbre 3y ago
Interesting, this is coming on the heels of my own terminal [0] finally being announced to the public. I hope the plug is fair game - friendly competition in this space has been sorely missing! [0] https://terminal.click https://terminal.click
- kadomony 3y ago
  I guess it’s more a matter of how would you feel if you debuted something and another person piled on their own competition. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  - pxc 3y ago
    If I were debuting a product, I think I'd feel a bit hurt and/or frustrated to see a competitor getting a big spotlight on the post. But on the other hand, many (if not most!) F/OSS projects I browse on GitHub include direct links to antecedents, competitors, and clones in their READMEs. When something is a project rather than a product, I don't think authors always worry about having the spotlight the same way. At least, many authors seem to have no problem with their work being presented in the context of a range of alternatives. Tbh, I don't think there's a singular answer here, even to the question of what empathy recommends.
- fortyseven 3y ago
  I mean, you had a feeling it might be wrong, but did it anyway...
  - abnercoimbre 3y ago
    It was a mistake for me as the author to do the direct comparison here. I tend to agree with the other comment - it's common for terminals to list / contrast each other rather openly. I don't know, I'm noticing people's opinion are split down the middle.
- ctvo 3y ago
  I'm much more interested in your product, and wouldn't have known about it otherwise. Is there a way to be notified when you actually allow public access? Happy to pay for the final product.
cocodill 3y ago
[flagged]
artdigital 3y ago
I see some electron stuff in there, looks to be another electron one? I’m genuinely curious if people just don’t care. I’m very battery aware and when I’m operating on battery power I make a conscious decision to not use electron or chromium stuff, so: sublimetext, kitty, safari, and so on. My battery on M1Max lasts me ages this way On AC power I don’t care and have a bazillion electron things running, but I still notice a pretty big difference in battery drain when unpowered
- imbnwa 3y ago
  > I’m genuinely curious if people just don’t care Terminal emulator is just too competitive a market to even consider one implemented in Electron, particularly on macOS where iTerm2 exists.
  - pxc 3y ago
    iTerm2 and Kitty both cover the specific kind of terminal Tabby seems to be going after in particular: 'batteries included', modernized, extended with new features, tight integration with the shell, special SSH and tmux integrations, etc. If you're into bells and whistles and moving beyond xterm's capabilities, there are multiple strong contenders for Mac, and both eschew web tech in favor of native code.
    - imbnwa 3y ago
      Yeah I run WezTerm now but came from Kitty, which is indeed wild with the features.
      - pxc 3y ago
        What made you go for Wezterm over kitty? That one's on my list of terminals to give a try in place of iTerm2 this year but I don't know much about it. (I just use DE defaults on Linux, but I'm back on macOS again at work and Wezterm is a lot more mature now than it was last time I was here.)
jzelinskie 3y ago
I feel like there's only 2 kinds of new terminals: 1) UX-focused: Most of these use electron/web technologies and pray nobody notices how much slower it is. 2) Performance-focused: minimal features, but using modern rendering APIs. AFAICT, everything in this category is just taking advantage of people not knowing Kitty already exists. What I do think is interesting about tabby, which I haven't seen mentioned too frequently by other terminals in category #1, is the ability to embed in a webpage. I'm definitely open to more products having a nice web terminal embedded in a page.
- Cannabat 3y ago
  Warp terminal is very fast and very feature-rich (and, last I tried about 6 months ago, still very new with some rough edges)
- pxc 3y ago
  Is it really fair to call Kitty minimalist? It has a ton of little UX enhancements you can turn on or integrate with.
  - mcbuilder 3y ago
    It's not minimalist to that like urxvt and st, but it does cater to a different crowd. Loving kitty by the way, I run `emacs -nw` on big remote servers and performance is top notch and now I have copy paste through kitty with OSC-52 escape codes instead of an abomination of an pbcopy/ssh script, it actually almost feels like a real editor now.
    - pxc 3y ago
      I guess I know what you mean, since kitty is decidedly more my bag than iTerm2 is. But while they have very different UI design philosophies, I think Kitty and iTerm2 have a lot in common in terms of that basic drive to make terminal emulators do things they never could before (even if that requires new extensions and/or clever tricks). > I run `emacs -nw` on big remote servers and performance is top notch and now I have copy paste through kitty with OSC-52 escape codes That sounds great! I'm still getting my feet wet with kitty. I should make a list of the special functionality I want to explore, including OSC-52.
ZunarJ5 3y ago
I really liked Tabby but it seemed to have problems trying to work off of multiple drives. That may just be me, though.
Aerbil313 3y ago
I’m just sad that people chose Typescript to write a terminal instead of Rust. Totally wrong tool for the job.
- ori_prior 3y ago
  One could discuss whether it really needs to be Rust. But TypeScript is definitely the wrong tool for the job. The performance reference is xterm. If you cannot beat that, don't bother.
- gerdesj 3y ago
  It's a teletype terminal emulator, probably with pretty things and stuff. Who cares what language it is written in? Will writing it in Rust ensure that PF1-4 emulation will work properly? You say that xxx is totally the wrong tool to use in the face of evidence that it might not be (Tabby is a tty emulator written in xxx). Why Rust and not Typescript? I use a TTY rather a lot - konsole or Linux native and I can't really get too excited about what provides it these days. I recall discovering Gentoo back in around 2000 and the shell just looked lovely compared to all other distros. Do bear in mind that you have a shell running in your TTY. Nowadays I run Arch and its shell setup looks a lot better now than it did - strangely close to Gentoo. #----------- I'm cough updating (repairing) my Arch laptop and sorting out a smart new Electron versioning snag (bye bye vscode for a while). Oh dear the CPU fan sounds rather Gentoo - I've been binging the AUR too much 8)
  - Aerbil313 3y ago
    > Who cares what language it is written in? My HP PC from 2015. Can’t afford something better atm.
falsaberN1 3y ago
I have an odd sense of deja vu, I'm certain it's not the first time I've seen an Electron based terminal with the same exact "for a modern age" descriptor.
- oneplane 3y ago
  I'm also not sure what's "wrong" with existing terminal emulators, except render acceleration when you do a lot of text I/O, but I think urxvt already had that solved. Other items seem to be solved outside of the terminal like 'bookmarks' or 'connection managers' and 'profiles'. Some emulators seem to focus more on style or discoverability, but one of the upsides of the existing learning curve is that you have to mentally organise and plan what you were going to do, instead of trying to manufacture a solution in the moment.
- jchook 3y ago
  Reminded of Hyper https://hyper.is/ https://hyper.is/
ctvo 3y ago
The very first thing I do when these projects pop up: is there a top level package.json in the repo? Pass.
- rubicks 3y ago
  Same. It's such a great time-saver.

41 points by nateb2022 3y ago

iTerm2 is a great terminal for macOS. I use it extensively every day. Despite that, I would gladly try out other terminals because it's fun and because I'm always open to finding something superior to even the great tools I use. That said, there is exactly 1 feature that seems to only exist in iTerm2, and until another terminal emulator appears that has it, I'm staying put: tmux control mode. https://github.com/Eugeny/tabby/issues/2715 https://github.com/Eugeny/tabby/issues/2715

joshstrange 3y ago
I don’t use that feature often but it sure is nice. It will take a lot to move me away from iTerm 2. I’m incredibly happy with it and it’s rock solid (and fast).
square_usual 3y ago
If you're not married to it being in tmux, you can use wezterm's SSH integration will open new tabs and panes in your current SSH session, which is most of what I use iTerm's tmux mode for.
- cassianoleal 3y ago
  I use it for that + session persistence. The latter is as important as the former to me. I imagine wezterm's doesn't do that, is that right? I remember trying it out a while back and not liking something. IIRC I found the configuration pretty arcane and hard to grok but I could be wrong. Also it could have improved since. It was a while ago.
michaelsbradley 3y ago
I used iTerm2 on a daily basis for many years, but started using Kitty in late 2021 and now prefer it: https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/ https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/
- inferiorhuman 3y ago
  I recently tried both Alacritty and Kitty out of curiosity and went back to iTerm ASAP. For me, on OSX, iTerm is the only one that gets the font handling right.
  - michaelsbradley 3y ago
    I downloaded/installed SF Mono, Noto Sans Symbols, and Noto Sans Symbols 2, and added this to ~/.config/kitty/kitty.conf: font_family SF Mono Looks great on my mac retina laptop and my iMac hooked to a 4k monitor. But, depending on what you're doing with fonts, iTerm could be better suited to your tastes, sure.
    - inferiorhuman 3y ago
      Yes, I know how to edit the config file. Jesus. The problem with Alacritty is that there is no (documented) font fallback and the author's slept on that for a few years. The (main) problem with Kitty is that font selection via font_family doesn't work. The author says it works for him, with the font I was using, so I left it at that. If by "better suited to your tastes" you mean is able to find fonts, then, yes iTerm is better suited to my tastes. I've a few ideas as to why the author wasn't able to repro the issue but no real reason to dig any deeper because iTerm works for me. I've rotated through Fira Code, Source Code Pro, and now I'm on IBM Plex Mono. iTerm just works for me without having to debug anything or wade through an issue tracker.
      - tsuujin 3y ago
        I’ve been using kitty for a few months now as my primary editor and have tried out about a dozen coding fonts because I think they’re neat, I’ve never had an issue getting kitty to find and load them.
  - alwillis 3y ago
    WezTerm [1] gets font handling correct if you want font fallback, etc. [1]: https://wezfurlong.org/wezterm/config/fonts.html https://wezfurlong.org/wezterm/config/fonts.html
E39M5S62 3y ago
I wrote a terminal-agnostic approximation of that called tmuxc - https://github.com/zdykstra/tmuxc https://github.com/zdykstra/tmuxc . It's very much tailored my exact workflow, mainly because nobody else seems interested in it. With a bit of hacking around you could probably make it work on macOS. I use it on both Linux and HaikuOS.
- jacknews 3y ago
  I must be missing something fundamental. tmux is a terminal multiplexer, as in you get to run multiple virtual terminals over a single actual terminal (eg ssh). And then tmuxc breaks these virtual terminals out into actual terminals? Why do you need tmux at all in that case, just fire up a bunch of terminals?
  - E39M5S62 3y ago
    tmux, for me, is about session persistence. I run multiple tmux sessions on a bastion host at work. tmuxc lets me reconnect to them each morning and then move them around my monitors as I see fit. I can hit a single key combination and have a new terminal open up with a shell on my bastion host - or any other host that I have a tmux/tmuxc session on.

Jarlakxen 3y ago

I used it almost daily, coming from tilix, it's great but I have some weird bug with ohmyzsh and split panels

abnercoimbre 3y ago

Interesting, this is coming on the heels of my own terminal [0] finally being announced to the public. I hope the plug is fair game - friendly competition in this space has been sorely missing! [0] https://terminal.click https://terminal.click

kadomony 3y ago
I guess it’s more a matter of how would you feel if you debuted something and another person piled on their own competition. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- pxc 3y ago
  If I were debuting a product, I think I'd feel a bit hurt and/or frustrated to see a competitor getting a big spotlight on the post. But on the other hand, many (if not most!) F/OSS projects I browse on GitHub include direct links to antecedents, competitors, and clones in their READMEs. When something is a project rather than a product, I don't think authors always worry about having the spotlight the same way. At least, many authors seem to have no problem with their work being presented in the context of a range of alternatives. Tbh, I don't think there's a singular answer here, even to the question of what empathy recommends.
fortyseven 3y ago
I mean, you had a feeling it might be wrong, but did it anyway...
- abnercoimbre 3y ago
  It was a mistake for me as the author to do the direct comparison here. I tend to agree with the other comment - it's common for terminals to list / contrast each other rather openly. I don't know, I'm noticing people's opinion are split down the middle.
ctvo 3y ago
I'm much more interested in your product, and wouldn't have known about it otherwise. Is there a way to be notified when you actually allow public access? Happy to pay for the final product.

cocodill 3y ago

[flagged]

artdigital 3y ago

I see some electron stuff in there, looks to be another electron one? I’m genuinely curious if people just don’t care. I’m very battery aware and when I’m operating on battery power I make a conscious decision to not use electron or chromium stuff, so: sublimetext, kitty, safari, and so on. My battery on M1Max lasts me ages this way On AC power I don’t care and have a bazillion electron things running, but I still notice a pretty big difference in battery drain when unpowered

imbnwa 3y ago
> I’m genuinely curious if people just don’t care Terminal emulator is just too competitive a market to even consider one implemented in Electron, particularly on macOS where iTerm2 exists.
- pxc 3y ago
  iTerm2 and Kitty both cover the specific kind of terminal Tabby seems to be going after in particular: 'batteries included', modernized, extended with new features, tight integration with the shell, special SSH and tmux integrations, etc. If you're into bells and whistles and moving beyond xterm's capabilities, there are multiple strong contenders for Mac, and both eschew web tech in favor of native code.
  - imbnwa 3y ago
    Yeah I run WezTerm now but came from Kitty, which is indeed wild with the features.
    - pxc 3y ago
      What made you go for Wezterm over kitty? That one's on my list of terminals to give a try in place of iTerm2 this year but I don't know much about it. (I just use DE defaults on Linux, but I'm back on macOS again at work and Wezterm is a lot more mature now than it was last time I was here.)

jzelinskie 3y ago

I feel like there's only 2 kinds of new terminals: 1) UX-focused: Most of these use electron/web technologies and pray nobody notices how much slower it is. 2) Performance-focused: minimal features, but using modern rendering APIs. AFAICT, everything in this category is just taking advantage of people not knowing Kitty already exists. What I do think is interesting about tabby, which I haven't seen mentioned too frequently by other terminals in category #1, is the ability to embed in a webpage. I'm definitely open to more products having a nice web terminal embedded in a page.

Cannabat 3y ago
Warp terminal is very fast and very feature-rich (and, last I tried about 6 months ago, still very new with some rough edges)
pxc 3y ago
Is it really fair to call Kitty minimalist? It has a ton of little UX enhancements you can turn on or integrate with.
- mcbuilder 3y ago
  It's not minimalist to that like urxvt and st, but it does cater to a different crowd. Loving kitty by the way, I run `emacs -nw` on big remote servers and performance is top notch and now I have copy paste through kitty with OSC-52 escape codes instead of an abomination of an pbcopy/ssh script, it actually almost feels like a real editor now.
  - pxc 3y ago
    I guess I know what you mean, since kitty is decidedly more my bag than iTerm2 is. But while they have very different UI design philosophies, I think Kitty and iTerm2 have a lot in common in terms of that basic drive to make terminal emulators do things they never could before (even if that requires new extensions and/or clever tricks). > I run `emacs -nw` on big remote servers and performance is top notch and now I have copy paste through kitty with OSC-52 escape codes That sounds great! I'm still getting my feet wet with kitty. I should make a list of the special functionality I want to explore, including OSC-52.

ZunarJ5 3y ago

I really liked Tabby but it seemed to have problems trying to work off of multiple drives. That may just be me, though.

Aerbil313 3y ago

I’m just sad that people chose Typescript to write a terminal instead of Rust. Totally wrong tool for the job.

ori_prior 3y ago
One could discuss whether it really needs to be Rust. But TypeScript is definitely the wrong tool for the job. The performance reference is xterm. If you cannot beat that, don't bother.
gerdesj 3y ago
It's a teletype terminal emulator, probably with pretty things and stuff. Who cares what language it is written in? Will writing it in Rust ensure that PF1-4 emulation will work properly? You say that xxx is totally the wrong tool to use in the face of evidence that it might not be (Tabby is a tty emulator written in xxx). Why Rust and not Typescript? I use a TTY rather a lot - konsole or Linux native and I can't really get too excited about what provides it these days. I recall discovering Gentoo back in around 2000 and the shell just looked lovely compared to all other distros. Do bear in mind that you have a shell running in your TTY. Nowadays I run Arch and its shell setup looks a lot better now than it did - strangely close to Gentoo. #----------- I'm cough updating (repairing) my Arch laptop and sorting out a smart new Electron versioning snag (bye bye vscode for a while). Oh dear the CPU fan sounds rather Gentoo - I've been binging the AUR too much 8)
- Aerbil313 3y ago
  > Who cares what language it is written in? My HP PC from 2015. Can’t afford something better atm.

falsaberN1 3y ago

I have an odd sense of deja vu, I'm certain it's not the first time I've seen an Electron based terminal with the same exact "for a modern age" descriptor.

oneplane 3y ago
I'm also not sure what's "wrong" with existing terminal emulators, except render acceleration when you do a lot of text I/O, but I think urxvt already had that solved. Other items seem to be solved outside of the terminal like 'bookmarks' or 'connection managers' and 'profiles'. Some emulators seem to focus more on style or discoverability, but one of the upsides of the existing learning curve is that you have to mentally organise and plan what you were going to do, instead of trying to manufacture a solution in the moment.
jchook 3y ago
Reminded of Hyper https://hyper.is/ https://hyper.is/

ctvo 3y ago

The very first thing I do when these projects pop up: is there a top level package.json in the repo? Pass.

rubicks 3y ago
Same. It's such a great time-saver.