Anyone using st, Simple Terminal?

[systems_glitch 110]

http://st.suckless.org/

 

Came across it being used in a Hack a Day project. It seems that it tries to be the most minimal xterm possible -- configuration is through a C header file/recompile, there's no scrollback, but it is 256-color and Unicode, and supports X pasting.

 

I mostly use XFCE's Terminal, but really it's just a container for a tmux session, so I'm playing with st.

[tekio 117]

I like Gnome Terminal. Used Xterm in the past, but got tired of configuring a file to change anything. Sometimes it's nice to change the terminal in real-time and just continue working. Even if the bloat does take some extra resources.

[systems_glitch 110]

I use XFCE4's Terminal mainly because it does everything a terminal should while also not pulling in all of Gnome or KDE. Still not decided on what I think of st, though it is completely adequate for daily work (as long as you use something like tmux or screen, no built in scrolling).

[tekio 117]

IDK... as long as its tabbed and easily customizable. No scroll back would suck for debugging compile errors. All errors could be sent to text and stdout can put into a text file as well. I'm sure there are also compiler flags for GCC to immediately stop and just display the first error causing all the additional errors. But needing to make conscious effort to change the way I work, for a piece of software might be a deal breaker.

 

It is nice to have many alternatives to everything though. Especially thinking back to the 90's and how lame webbrowsers on Linux were. I.E. was 98% market share and killed Netscape Navigator. Navigator for Linux really sucked. I'm glad opera was around back then. Or the choices would have been Navigator that was not updated for a few years or Konquorer and its buggy javascript engine.

Edited December 2, 2014 by tekio

[systems_glitch 110]

Yep,  just another possible choice! I could see using it on embedded systems with X, since it's so lightweight, or using it as a starting point for a customized terminal.

 

I'm not missing the tabs and scrolling with it, since tmux covers that, and I prefer tmux anyway. What I do miss is the ability to right-click on a URL and select "Copy URL." I'm sure some people would argue that it's outside the scope of a terminal emulator to determine what text on the screen is actually part of a URL, but it's really handy with IRC or many of the Java testing frameworks we use (you don't get meaningful test results in the console, you have to open a HTML document).

[tekio 117]

I like Terminal in OS X. I can copy and paste using the keyboard shortcuts. Maybe now, I'll google and figure out how to get XFCE and Gnome Terminal to do that. I'm sure it's possible, and I just need to RTFM.

 

One thing that is weird about Terminal in 10.10, it has an option for "secure keyboard entry". I'm really skeptical about this:

1) Why is it an option? Why does it assume people want "key loggers" to be able to access keystrokes?

2) Why only in terminal? Why not in Safari? 

3) How can it work? Unless it uses a different driver and needs to be signed by Apple's key?

 

Who knows.. maybe one day I'll have time to google it. 

[systems_glitch 110]

XFCE's terminal by default does copy+paste with Shift + CTRL + (c,v) -- another useful feature, though as long as X11 select/middle-click copy and paste works, I'm usually fine without it.

[tekio 117]

That's pretty cool. In all honesty, I'm about ready to give up OS X for Linux again. With Chrome Apps that can run like regular applications on Linux (through Chrome's Node JS engine), there are a lot more options for cute (and sometimes very handy) "apps" like OS X, now.

 

Let me ask you this glitch (since I have a feeling you might use something on Linux): what's a good code snippet manager for Linux? That is really the one thing I have not been able to find a decent Linux app for. I've tried a few Chrome based apps for this, but most were either flaky or stored all snippets on Github. I just don't like stuff "in the cloud". My main reason for shunning OS X now.

[systems_glitch 110]

I use github for code snippets, but this one seems popular as a command-line snippet sharing tool:

 

http://ix.io/

 

iirc lattera uses it