What does HackerNews think of termite?

Termite is obsoleted by Alacritty. Termite was a keyboard-centric VTE-based terminal, aimed at use within a window manager with tiling and/or tabbing support.

Language: C++

Contour: Modern and fast terminal emulator | Oct 2023
To be fair, the vi input mode (or modal input modes) in Contour are way more than simply doing `set -o vi` in bash. You cannot compare those two.

The reason why I implemented modal input modes (vi mode) in Contour is, that I noticed Tilix [1] is having vi input modes and people seemed to like it, I wonder if it might be useful to me personally as well, especially since I'm a heavy VIM user, I asked myself if it might make sense to have in a terminal. So let's get it in.

I was surprised how much it became part of my daily live, in fact, there's no need to grab the mouse at all when using Contour. You press Ctrl+Shift+Space (configurable) to enter normal mode and move the cursor just like in vim (way beyond the basic support that Alacritty implemented).

Especially paired with the indicator statusline support, when showing this one permanently (you can also change the color of that statusline), it became one of the first-class features for me on why I like Contour (not just because I am developing it).

Fun things to do (especially when shell integration is enabled):

- `yim`: to yank the text in between two markers (that is your command output) - `%`: jump to matching bracket, good when having cat'ed a long json file and you want to quickly browse around - you can also rectangular select like in vim, and then press either p (includes LF) or which joins the multiline clipboard text into a single line (removing LF's), that payed off a lot for output like `git status` and wanting to operate on parts of the output (files e.g.)

Have a look at the still young website's documentation here: https://contour-terminal.org/input-modes/#supported-text-obj...

for a more complete look of what you can do with the keyboard (normal mode) :)

[1] https://github.com/thestinger/termite/

KDE and GNOME seeks $100k to turn Flathub into a Store for the Linux desktop | Feb 2023
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There are several full time paid developers working on it which is plenty of resources (AFAIK more than KDE). They are not only actively user-hostile but also community-hostile. Every library or project they have under their umbrella receives updates all the time that only serve GNOME and potentially break all software dependent on it that are not part of GNOME (e.g [1]).

1.: https://github.com/thestinger/termite
What's a good Linux terminal emulator that doesn't try to reinvent TMUX? | Nov 2022
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That's strange. I wonder why debian is lagging behind on packaging it? Alacritty is packaged by my package manager, so I never really thought about it much.

In addition, at some point I had a look, and the former terminal I used to use (termite[0]) deprecated itself in favour of alacritty as well so I can't even switch back (I mean I could, but it's now unmaintained.)

[0] https://github.com/thestinger/termite
Wayland Core Protocol Is Tailored Only for Gnome and That’s Not a Good Thing | Jul 2022
Sounds like https://github.com/thestinger/termite, the vte-ng issue, the https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=679658 issue which goes as far back as https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=78291.

Yes that is 2002, over 20 years old.

I guess GNOME never stops being GNOME.

Isn't Redhat IBM now?

Exploring System76's New Rust Based Desktop Environment | Jan 2022
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History and experience tells a different story [1]. Never trust a library that is maintained by GNOME.

1.: https://github.com/thestinger/termite
Show HN: Sixel-tmux displays graphics even if your terminal has no Sixel support | Oct 2021
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You might wanna consider avoiding all VTE based terminals (includes GNOME termina) on Linux because VTE development is spearheaded by GNOME developers. They're almost always guided by their "every preference has a cost" philosophy so don't expect any decent changes happening to VTE.

Here's another explanation why VTE based terminals are best avoided.

https://github.com/thestinger/termite

Here's a complete list.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/List_of_applications#VTE-ba...
Windows 10 to be retired in 2025, as new OS unveils | Jun 2021
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GTK, here are two forum threads that covers this.

GTK3 regressions from a GTK2 perspective

https://ubuntu-mate.community/t/gtk3-regressions-from-a-gtk2...

Horrible GTK3 / GNOME UI design is leaking into Ubuntu Mate applications in 20.04

https://ubuntu-mate.community/t/horrible-gtk3-gnome-ui-desig...

And then you have the terminal Termite

https://github.com/thestinger/termite

  This is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to their hostility towards other 
  projects using VTE as a library. GTK and most of the GNOME project are much of 
  the same. Avoid them and don't make the mistake of thinking their libraries are 
  meant for others to use.
JavaScript can definitely work as scripting language for a desktop environment, but it doesn't work for Gnome in the current state.

I have written about this topic before, see thread here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27195694,

quoting myself

  Personally I prefer building GUIs in a scripting language 
  like JavaScript over a compiled language like C and C++
and

  I think for Gnome and other desktops that uses this 
  technique, it is in the right direction
But the negatives in short are poor documentation, memory leaks, you end up only using the approved plugins (if you don't like to restart your desktop more than once a day) which of course negates the whole idea of a plugin system.
Fed up with the Mac, I spent six months with a Linux laptop | Apr 2021
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I tried a bunch of terminals and ended up switching from urxvt to termite https://github.com/thestinger/termite a few years back (mainly for it's better handling for refreshing certain curses style output).

This might be the best recent overview of some of the pros and cons between some of the different options: https://anarc.at/blog/2018-04-12-terminal-emulators-1/
Kitty – the fast, featureful, GPU based terminal emulator | Oct 2020
Kitty is one of those programs you install because you read about some performance improvements and mature feature stack, then completely forget about it in the background. The ideal piece of software. It just works and does the job well enough to be invisible.

Likewise I had repeated issues with iTerm breaking or consuming tons of resources for no reason which I had zero interest in debugging.

Glad to recommend it to anyone else.

...At least on MacOS. On Linux I was very happy with Termite which fit my keyboard-centric linux style https://github.com/thestinger/termite

GrapheneOS – A privacy and security-focused mobile OS with Android compatibility | Jun 2019
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He's also the author of Termite[0]. Pretty impressive how many projects he's been involved with.

[0] https://github.com/thestinger/termite
Tilix: A tiling terminal emulator | Aug 2017
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termite

https://github.com/thestinger/termite https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/termite
St – simple terminal | Nov 2014
The best terminal emulator I've used is termite[1]. It has vim-like keybindings and normal/insert mode, plus a bunch of other features worth looking at. If you are using xterm, urxvt, or something similar, I would highly suggest giving it a try.

[1] https://github.com/thestinger/termite