From 5669a274b156b57d5b2e9e5427006a8626de143e Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Marcin Chrzanowski Date: Sat, 8 May 2021 23:04:03 +0200 Subject: Add termite vs alacritty post --- src/blog/termite-has-been-deprecated.html | 74 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 74 insertions(+) create mode 100644 src/blog/termite-has-been-deprecated.html (limited to 'src/blog') diff --git a/src/blog/termite-has-been-deprecated.html b/src/blog/termite-has-been-deprecated.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..112178c --- /dev/null +++ b/src/blog/termite-has-been-deprecated.html @@ -0,0 +1,74 @@ +title: Termite Has Been Deprecated +date: May 08, 2021 22:23 +--- +

+I have been using termite as +my daily driver terminal emulator for over five years now. Turns out that its +creator and maintainer just announced that he's stopping development and +abandoning the project. The reason? +Alacritty, another terminal +emulator, by termite maintainer's own judgment, is basically strictly better. +

+ +

+My main reasons for using termite were its minimalistic design, keyboard-driven, +vi-like selection mode, and easy configuration. Alacritty, turns out, does all +of these, while also being faster and more secure. +

+ +

Switching to alacritty

+

+On first hearing this, I immediately installed alacritty, just to check out if +it really is a viable option for me. Before the installation completed, my first +instinct was that I would have probably needed about a week or so to tweak my +config and get used to the interface. I was expecting some switching friction. +

+ +

+Turns out there was zero friction. After 5 minutes of test running, I'd set +alacritty to be my default terminal. I'm writing this post from inside +it, and I don't even notice the difference, other than a slightly darker default +color scheme. The vi-like selection mode is still at the familiar +ctrl+shift+space keybinding, and it seems like that was the biggest +termite-specific feature I was used to. +

+ +

+If anything, I'm already seeing big improvements when compared to termite. +Specifically, the vi mode in termite had slight annoying issues: jumping by word +didn't always work exactly the way I expected it to, and when copying selected +text, the cursor actually had to be one character right of the last +character you wanted to copy. I'm not seeing these issues with alacritty's +vi mode, and so far it feels even more intuitive than termite's. +

+ +

Bonus tip: terminal vs. ssh

+

+On the occasion of getting a new terminal, I'm reminded of a very useful + + blogpost by Yaroslav de la Peña Smirnov + thanks to which I solved a mild annoyance I've had with termite for years. +Basically, when logging into an ssh session on various machines from termite, I +would have weird problems in the shell, the remote machine apparently not +understanding how to communicate properly with my terminal. This would make +commands like clear or tmux not work, or even more +annoyingly, cursor navigation and erasing characters with backspace were broken. +

+ +

+Previously, I had fixed this by hacking environment variables, but you can solve +it much more cleanly with the following: +

+# on your local machine:
+infocmp $TERM > $TERM.terminfo
+scp $TERM.terminfo <remote machine>:~/
+
+# on remote machine:
+tic -x $TERM.terminfo
+
+

+ +

+I had to repeat this little ritual with alacritty and the remote machines I +frequent, and now everything is working smoothly! +

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