Jonathan Lam

Core Developer @ Hudson River Trading


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Using xterm

On 4/27/2021, 12:53:04 PM

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I don't see many people using xterm as the terminal emulator in a general *nix install. I think most people use the default terminal emulator that comes bundled with the desktop environment, like xfce4-terminal or konsole (KDE). While xterm is lacking in some of the fancier features like tabbing1, I like how simple and standard it is (the standard terminal emulator for X). It is nice to be able to switch to another desktop environment (e.g., when debugging a friend's code) and be immediately familiar with the terminal shortcuts.

That being said, the conventions are not very similar to other common terminal emulators, so this is a list for my own remembering.


Footnotes

1. Of course, there are always workarounds.

2. I found this strange coming from Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V, but it actually requires fewer keystrokes because the copying is implicit every time you select any text. And if you use middle click, pasting only takes one press rather than a key combination.

3. Perhaps not as important, but I use this a lot because my mouse scrollwheel is broken


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