Hello,

Which terminal do you use? And why?

I am using xterm right now, but am looking at others - such as rxvt, eterm, aterm, etc.

What are the benefits, strengths, weaknesses of the various terminals? How do they use system resources?

For me, the other terminals have little over the good ol' xterm (i.e., transparency, which is nice - but visual goodies tend to lose their novelty with me after about a month).

Transparency? That should be possible for xterm as well.

I use Yakuake. I love the feature that I can "drop it down". It gives a very fast access to the terminal without any need for using the mouse.

Though a warning. I have tried it in KDE, Gnome and Fluxbox. The functionality is as good in any of them. But the tabs looks weird in Gnome and Fluxbox.

It doesn't take up much computer power. And it's based on KDE's Konsole so transparency is available!

Yakuake did sound good when I first heard about it, but after using it..a no-go. Looks ugly when it starts, looks ugly when it drops or rises, and even more ugly if it drops without any "animation". And doesn't work, as far as I can tell, without some KDE stuff around.

If I use any graphical desktop/window manager, I use whatever terminal emulator comes along it as long as it doesn't take a day to load. Usually they blend in better than others, and since I have it running all the time, there's no need to use mouse to call it in (a shortcut key combination works fine). When on a window manager that does not have a bloated half built-in terminal emulator with it, it's usually just xterm. Transparency is completely useless, because it's either pseudo-transparency (useless, resource hungry and looks ugly when other windows exist) or needs Beryl or something (useless, resource starving and still looks ugly heh).

So...if I can, I stick to the "real" console, not terminal emulators. When I need a terminal emulator, I take the first I can find - it's enough.

Hello,

How? Everywhere else says that transparency is not possible with xterm.

Hello,

Transparency is nice for screenshots! I used transparency a few years back with KDE. It was really nice and novel, but it wore off after about a month and I didn't care to have the transparency anymore. It also makes the text hard to read, in my opinion. But having transparency is visually appealing in a screenshot - especially if you can go borderless. But, again for functioning, I think transparency is debilitating. And sometimes it requires additional installed software, like Beryl as you mentioned or KDE.


How well does xterm do with the less common Unicode characters? How well does it use system resources? Does anyone have stats?

Launch your terminal, select Edit, then Profiles > Default > Edit > Effects > Transparent Background.

By the way, you can also change the colors, both for the fonts and the background. On a dark wallpaper, I use white fonts.

Transparency does not require Beryl or anything of that sort - although you may need Compiz if you like your windows borders transparent as well.

I use rxvt. Small memory footprint, no gimmicks, no frills :}
And let fluxbox handle my "tabs" ....



Cheers,
Tink

Hello,

That almost sounds like KDE's Konsole.

Gnome-terminal, actually. Multi-gnome is even more convenient with its terminal tabs. But seeing your list of distros I don't think you're a gnome type or am I wrong?

I just use whatever's available. xterm usually, since it doesn't have any menus or anything like Konsole does.

Hello,

I am less objectionable to Gnome than to KDE. I don't have anything KDE installed on my system. I just don't like some of its design principles and workings - reminds me too much of a certain Redmond, WA company. For me, KDE a lot of times goes against a basic UNIX/Linux tenet - if I wanted the computer to do something, I would have told it to do so - and if I told the computer to do something, it is because I want the computer to do something. KDE is very good for some people, but not for me.

I don't have the same objections so much toward GNOME, but I still don't want to use it primarily. I would use GNOME based tools if they happen to be the better tool for the job (nothing is coming to mind at this moment).