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Location: Rome, Italy ; Novi Sad, Srbija; Brisbane, Australia
Distribution: Ubuntu / ITOS2008
Posts: 1,207
Rep:
Linux Terms
I decided to do a little test with three most popular Linux terms, Eterm, xterm and aterm. Why? Because i noticed Eterm is slow and wanted to verify that, and i must say i was shocked. All three terms are the latest stable versions.
I ran cmatrix program, that prints a bunch of characters to the screen imitating the matrix screensaver. Cmatrix program was run in the maximized term window and gkrellm was used to see CPU usage, here are the results.
Eterm: Uses memory, but we all know that, but when cmatrix started i was shocked, 100% CPU usage and slow like hell!!
Aterm: Just installed it today. It supports many of the Eterm optioins and uses less memory. When i ran cmatrix i got about 15-20% CPU usage and the program was running smoothly.
Xterm: The simplest term of the three, no nice transparency and tinting options, but very fast. Uses very little memory, and when cmatrix was run it used about 5-10% CPU.
Well just to show you what a resource hog Eterm is! Use Aterm!
Related question: Is there a way to format ls output in Aterm/Xterm? When i ls i get directory names, etc in color, but also bold and hard to read. Can i make them normal, not bold?
Location: Rome, Italy ; Novi Sad, Srbija; Brisbane, Australia
Distribution: Ubuntu / ITOS2008
Posts: 1,207
Original Poster
Rep:
Thanks for the tip, i edited the mentioned files, and now i get colors i want in xterm, and i removed the bold output, but in Aterm everything is still bold. Does anybody know where Aterm keeps it's copy of DIR_COLORS (or a variant of it) Thanks in advance
-NSKL
i have that same problem in aterm. and was also wondering why vi doesnt work with aterm. only vim. and another thing? when i open a C file in xterm using vi all the variables and structs are a different color. basically i want aterm just like xterm with transperancy. taking out the bold DIR colors and different colors in vim or a way to use vi with aterm.
Hey centr0, hopefully you're still checking this thread. I just figured out how to get vi to work properly in aterm. Go to the aterm source directory (for me, it's aterm-0.4.2) then cat doc/etc/rxvt.termcap >> /etc/termcap. This will add the config for rxvt terminals to the end of your termcap. Now when you start aterm, use the option '-tn rxvt' to set the TERM name to rxvt so it will use the correct termcap entry (which we just added).
This has been bugging me since I installed aterm because I always like to use less to read a file and then hit 'v' to edit it with vi. Now I can say good-bye to rxvt and xterm.
Cerbere, Thanks for the tip. I too have been frustrated with aterm of late for that very same reason. It's been a pain in the butt keeping a separate xterm open for editing, as I do love the transparent aterm.
Eterm is beautiful, uses approximately 3k per instance and is fast enough. Maybe not the term of choice for graphical shell games but fine for everyday admin use. When it comes to trimming the fat, terminals don't spring to my mind.
By the term 'term' they mean terminal, as in 'your interface to the shell'. More specifically, a terminal emulator, meaning like back in the day when remote terminal on timesharing machines were the only interface. Think of it like the msdos window or the 'command prompt'.
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