urxvt vs lxterminal vs sakura

What features/apps/bugfixes needed in a future Puppy
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What terminals should be included in the base sfs

Poll ended at Mon 01 Jul 2019, 19:19

lxterminal
6
38%
lxterminal
0
No votes
urxvt
7
44%
urxvt
0
No votes
sakura
0
No votes
sakura
0
No votes
both lxterminal and urxvt
0
No votes
both lxterminal and urxvt
2
13%
both urxvt and sakura
0
No votes
both urxvt and sakura
0
No votes
both lxterminal and sakura
0
No votes
both lxterminal and sakura
0
No votes
Give it all to me: lxterminal, urxvt and sakura
0
No votes
Give it all to me: lxterminal, urxvt and sakura
0
No votes
Other: Specify
0
No votes
Other: Specify
1
6%
 
Total votes: 16

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s243a
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urxvt vs lxterminal vs sakura

#1 Post by s243a »

I've scene musher0 in a few posts plugging urxvt as the preferred terminal due to better sudo-gui features (e.g. menus).

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 65#1026965
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 81#1026581


I suspect that most users don't know about a lot of these features and one can always install urxvt if they want it.

The keyboard features for copy and paste in urxvt work well but both sakura and lxterminal are more intuitive and user friendly in this regards. I certainly don't want menus in console based applications to be behave poorly but can any of these terminals be run independently of an xserver and provide these features?

That said one could have a very basic xserver (no window manager) that was just a terminal emulator like urxvt and maybe a terminal multiplexer. This would be a very lightweight setup.

I find it interesting that musher0 is deriding the push for leaner pups but at the same time pushing for better terminal support. I say this because terminal based applications are lighter weight. Granted some things are faster in a terminal and can be used in a full GUI environment.

The poll will be open for 60 days.
Last edited by s243a on Thu 02 May 2019, 19:30, edited 1 time in total.

musher0
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#2 Post by musher0 »

Hi s243a.

IMO, urxvt, v. 9.22 or better, is the only terminal worth including in a
Puppy. The other terminals cannot do a quarter of what it can.

With proper settings in .Xdefaults or .Xresources, urxvt can look as user-
friendly as any of the others.

But with a bit of study, the user can make it into a full blown pseudo-GUI
for the CLI apps he likes to use. The other terminal apps are not as
malleable.

Considering that urxvt allows the user to fully control the colors, the fonts
and the size of the fonts, the size and the borders of the console window,
plus it gives access to ANSI sequences, it can even present a more
interesting look than any yad-based or gtkdialog-based utility.

Finally, if I may be as bold: you forgot to mention "Simple Terminal", or st,
as an absolutely no frills alternative terminal. I find it very good and very
fast as the terminal associated with ROX.

Best regards.
Last edited by musher0 on Thu 02 May 2019, 19:39, edited 1 time in total.
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s243a
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#3 Post by s243a »

musher0 wrote:Hi s243a.

IMO, urxvt-9.22 or better version, is the only terminal worth including.
The other terminals cannot do a quarter of what it can.

With proper settings in .Xdefaults or .Xresources, urxvt can look as user-
friendly as any of the others.

But with a bit of study, the user can make it into a full blown pseudo-GUI
for CLI apps he likes to use. The other terminal apps are not as malleable.

Finally, if I may be as bold: you forgot to mention "Simple Terminal", or st,
as an absolutely no frills alternative terminal. I find it very good and very
fast as the terminal associated with ROX.

Best regards.
Do you have a list of applications that you consider essential that depend on urxvt? Maybe they could all be bundled together into a sfs.

s243a
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#4 Post by s243a »

Apologies for the funny looking poll. I thought poll options got deleted when I edited the first post.

musher0
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#5 Post by musher0 »

s243a wrote:
musher0 wrote:Hi s243a.

IMO, urxvt-9.22 or better version, is the only terminal worth including.
The other terminals cannot do a quarter of what it can.

With proper settings in .Xdefaults or .Xresources, urxvt can look as user-
friendly as any of the others.

But with a bit of study, the user can make it into a full blown pseudo-GUI
for CLI apps he likes to use. The other terminal apps are not as malleable.

Finally, if I may be as bold: you forgot to mention "Simple Terminal", or st,
as an absolutely no frills alternative terminal. I find it very good and very
fast as the terminal associated with ROX.

Best regards.
Do you have a list of applications that you consider essential that depend on urxvt? Maybe they could all be bundled together into a sfs.
What a strange question!

That I know of, no utility depends on urxvt. But with urxvt, ALL GNU and
CLI utilities can be made to look as pseudo-GUIs.

I'm taking your question as bordering on bias. Why exile urxvt into an sfs?
To include an under-performing terminal in the main Puppy sfs?

Geez.
musher0
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"You want it darker? We kill the flame." (L. Cohen)

musher0
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#6 Post by musher0 »

s243a wrote:Apologies for the funny looking poll. I thought poll options got deleted when I edited the first post.
No worries. The poll function does that, I don't know why.
musher0
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rufwoof
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#7 Post by rufwoof »

tilda is nice. Mine is set (Fatdog default (as installed from the fatdog repo)) to F1 toggles between terminal and main gui, and where I've set its display size to the screen size. https://youtu.be/1iKxrBJjGVc Cut and paste works well, as does url launcher (you do however have to Ctrl-click to follow url links). Works well with "screen" (terminal multiplexor) and combined with xdotool you can have it load up with a set of tabs/programs all ready to go http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=116073
Last edited by rufwoof on Mon 06 May 2019, 08:51, edited 2 times in total.
[size=75]( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) :wq[/size]
[url=http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=1028256#1028256][size=75]Fatdog multi-session usb[/url][/size]
[size=75][url=https://hashbang.sh]echo url|sed -e 's/^/(c/' -e 's/$/ hashbang.sh)/'|sh[/url][/size]

musher0
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Re: urxvt vx lxterminal vs sakura

#8 Post by musher0 »

s243a wrote:( ... ) I find it interesting that musher0 is deriding the push for leaner pups
but at the same time pushing for better terminal support. I say this
because terminal based applications are lighter weight. Granted some
things are faster in a terminal and can be used in a full GUI environment.
( ,,, )
Hi s243a.

Deriding... Not so. I believe -- along with Argolance, IIRC -- that a Puppy
should offer all the apps a user needs daily. No more, no less. I think the
size of current Puppies is ok. It's about half the size of the medium-sized
distros, as Colonel_Panic observed in another thread initiated by forum
member oui. ( Note to me: find that URL. )

I'll agree anytime with "cut the fat" in a Puppy, but never with "cut the
meat" in a Puppy.

Case in point: jrb's upupbb32-light. In his initial draft of it, he had removed
the ICU libraries in an effort to cut down the size. That is certainly a
laudable goal. ( "ICU" is short for "International Components of Unicode". )

While the effect of that removal was unnoticeable for Anglophone users,
it created me numerous problems, because in our language, we use
accented characters provided by Unicode.

Which means, on the more general level: remove the ICU libs and you're
complicating the life of anyone using an alphabet with accented letters
( that includes all Latin languages, plus German, Swedish, Hungarian, etc. ).
That's roughly a billion and a half people a Puppy would be cutting itself
from, if removing the ICU libs. Can PuppyLinux afford that?

Or we go back to the cumbersome ISO-8859-* standard? I don't think
anybody wants to do that in this day and age.

As I said, cut the fat, not the meat.

If a dev wants to create a leaner English-only Puppy -- leaner because all
internationalization and localization apps will have been removed --, that's
ok. But (s)he should advertise it as such.

#
On your subject of GUI apps vs CLI apps --

In my mind, pushing for wider and better use of CLI applications does not
exclude the use of GUI applications. It doesn't have to. Simply put: some
CLI apps do some things better, and some GUI apps do other things
better. We should not be opposing them.

#
About your first quote of me, to put it in context:
part of the problem comes because I have to use a track ball instead of a
regular mouse, and not all Pups recognize it.

I had a couple of serious "tendinitis" in my right wrist in the past, so now
I have to use a trackball. The buttons for copy / paste on a trackball do
not react exactly the same as on a regular mouse. Sort of an "evdev
patch" is needed on some Pups, as in the case of this upupbb32-light and
of josejp2424's DPupBuster-7.9.0.2

Problem now solved in upupbb32-light, BTW.

#
BFN.
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6502coder
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#9 Post by 6502coder »

Rightly or wrongly, I interpret the question as, "If a distro can only have one terminal app, which one should it be?"

In that case, urxvt. Both newbies just learning Linux and people coming from other versions of Linux will expect that, at the very least, urxvt is there.

s243a
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Re: urxvt vx lxterminal vs sakura

#10 Post by s243a »

musher0 wrote:Case in point: jrb's upupbb32-light. In his initial draft of it, he had removed
the ICU libraries in an effort to cut down the size. That is certainly a
laudable goal. ( "ICU" is short for "International Components of Unicode". )

While the effect of that removal was unnoticeable for Anglophone users,
it created me numerous problems, because in our language, we use
accented characters provided by Unicode.

Which means, on the more general level: remove the ICU libs and you're
complicating the life of anyone using an alphabet with accented letters
( that includes all Latin languages, plus German, Swedish, Hungarian, etc. ).
That's roughly a billion and a half people a Puppy would be cutting itself
from, if removing the ICU libs. Can PuppyLinux afford that?

Or we go back to the cumbersome ISO-8859-* standard? I don't think
anybody wants to do that in this day and age.
One could put urxvt and ICU libs in the adrv and then technically the distro would still have these features. A normal puppy wouldn't do this but If one was trying to make an extremely light weight pup, It should be noted that the ICU libs are quite large.

I agree that Unicode seems essential but upupbb32-light did show that you can get a working system without it, even if this is perhaps undesirable.

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Lobster
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#11 Post by Lobster »

Puppy uses bashscript extensively.
Many of its unique programs and utilities are written in bashscript.

Cli, terminal, command line, shell - same thing

I voted for the basic :D

Puppy small
but well built
Puppy Raspup 8.2Final 8)
Puppy Links Page http://www.smokey01.com/bruceb/puppy.html :D

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#12 Post by musher0 »

Hi, s243a.

When someone talks to me about Puppy size, I think size of the iso. E.g., the iso's
of peebee's Puppies ship with the main Puppy sfs plus adrv, fdrv, ydrv and zdrv.
Theoretically, it is posible to merge all the ?drv's in the main Puppy sfs and it
wouldn't make a difference. I suspect peebee uses the ?drv's because it facilitates
his job of developing a Puppy.

Presenting, like you suggest in your example, urxvt and the ICU libs in a separate
sfs, to me that looks more like you're giving the user a non-essential option.
However, the ICU libs are essential for non-English speakers if they want to work in
their language.

Am I splitting hairs here? I'm not sure I am.

You idea certainly touches on the subject of Puppy design that is discussed in the
other thread.

BFN.
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wiak
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#13 Post by wiak »

I tend to always install lxterminal (unless something like Sakura or Roxterm is already installed). Reason is that I can never remember how to cut and paste text in urxvt. I don't use a mouse (only trackpad on laptop along with the left/right 'mouse' keys the laptop provides. So no middle mouse button available to me and pressing L and R simultaneously tends to be a hit a miss affair for me). I think that newer versions of urxvt allows Ctrl-Shift-C and Ctrl-Shift-V for copy and paste, but I am never sure and often forget when I need it. Also I can't remember if that copy is to Primary buffer or to Clipboard, so I often have issues copying/pasting text to and from urxvt (and xterm and similar) and become impatient with that so prefer just to install lxterminal...

Nevertheless, quite a number of yad or gtkdialog utils expect urxvt (tho sometimes xterm) on system and lxterminal isn't often auto-checked for as an alternative. Hence I vote for both urxvt and lxterminal (tho I generally just use lxterminal myself). Having to remember cryptic key commands is not user-friendly and so I'm surprised Puppy often doesn't come with lxterminal, which (unlike urxvt) I feel is entirely intuitive to use (though Roxterm, or sakura, is quite user-friendly too when provided).

wiak

backi
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#14 Post by backi »

Hi wiak !
Reason is that I can never remember how to cut and paste text in urxvt.
That`s true ........urxvt Terminal is really a mess .See no Reason to put it in any Distro except for those Arguments you mentioned above .There are more flexible Alternatives .

Regards !

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#15 Post by mikeslr »

urxvt may be the more powerful application once you've learned how to configure it. But that's not user/newbie friendly. Both rox & lxterminal provide a GUI with an Menu (Edit > cut or paste) avoiding the hard to remember/hard to implement middle-click. With lxterminal, right-clicking brings up another menu for cutting and pasting. I don't know if rox can and rox (at least the versions I've used) had to have their 'running as root' nag turned off.

I don't know sakura at all.

Perhaps those who can make extensive use of the terminal will find that urxvt better fills their needs. But all I do with a terminal is enter simple one-line commands or occasionally multi-line commands which I've stored in a text-file or am copying from a web-page. For the first, which terminal doesn't matter. For the second --and to preserve a record of a multi-line sequence of commands-- the easy to use lxterminal does the job.

As long as urxvt is available in a Puppy's repo, anyone needing its greater capabilities can add it.

Hence my vote for lxterminal.

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#16 Post by dancytron »

For the same reasons as others, lxterminal or roxterminal.

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#17 Post by musher0 »

Hello all.

I thought I'd put in a good word for the "old kid on the block" most people ( including
myself ) seem to keep forgetting: MLterm ( "Multi-Lingual term" ).

Really top-notch if using other locales and keyboards than English. Initially designed for
Asian locales and keyboards, it can handle any other type of locale and keyboard.

BFN.
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lmemsm
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Re: urxvt vx lxterminal vs sakura

#18 Post by lmemsm »

musher0 wrote: I had a couple of serious "tendinitis" in my right wrist in the past, so now
I have to use a trackball. The buttons for copy / paste on a trackball do
not react exactly the same as on a regular mouse.
Have you tried a touchpad in place of a mouse or trackball? A mouse isn't the best solution to avoid RSI if you're doing a lot of work on a computer. I did try a trackball for a while, but I found a touchpad works better for me. It's also fairly easy to emulate most mouse inputs with the touchpad. It's another option in place of a standard mouse. I'm always looking for tools that help prevent RSI for heavy computer users.

As to urxvt, haven't had any issues using a touchpad instead of a mouse with urxvt. I also remember when several terminal programs (using the VTE library) had a security issue. urxvt was one of the few programs that wasn't affected by the security problem. I like running urxvt as a daemon and then running urxvtc. New terminals come up quickly and it does a good job with memory utilization.

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