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Comment by dgellow | Hacker News Reader

Also, even if I would spend 100% of my time in a terminal, iTerm offers such a better experience than Linux terminals (that’s just my personal experience, I used various Linux distributions for ~6 years)

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I use iTerm2 when I'm on MacOS, but I basically use it like I use a Linux terminal. I just don't need so many features from the terminal itself... I do need Unicode, with RTL, and colors, and a nice scrollback buffer.

For example, I don't use tabs in the terminal. I usually open a new window and use the WM from outside the terminal, or use tmux inside the terminal. Tabs in the terminal itself are not that useful in my workflow.

My current favorite Linux terminal is kitty (https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/), and before that I used rxvt-unicode.

Wait, you use iTerm2 on macOS, but you need RTL support? Is there a way of making that work? I’ve long wanted to switch to iTerm2, but its treatment of Arabic script is so janky, I just can’t do it. I’m still using the default Terminal app as a result.

There's a proposed patch in the bug tracker: https://gitlab.com/gnachman/iterm2/issues/1611#note_10740636...

Maybe you can give it a try.

Thanks, I’ll check that out!

I don't have a solution for you, sorry... I need RTL on Linux, on macos I just avoid it.

He's getting that experience through the window manager. i3 offers the features like tabs or horizontal/vertical splitting.

I believe you mean "she's" as the author of this article is a woman.

I recently switched from using a Mac professionally for 8 years to Ubuntu and used iTerm on the Mac, and I honestly have no idea what you're talking about. iTerm was good, but I miss nothing about it. The default terminal with Ubuntu 18 is just as good. Well, better, because it has Ubuntu underneath it all ;)

I had colleagues who returned their company-issued X1 Carbons and bought a Mac with out-of-pocket money, so they could use iTerm2. Some of its features are indispensable and not found anywhere in Linux, although YMMV of course.

I use iTerm to connect to Ubuntu and I feel like I have the best of both worlds, a great terminal emulator and Ubuntu beneath it.

What features? (Honestly asking)

- Auto-summon of the Password Manager on password prompts

- Grep for things that look like IP address and color them in blue, or MAC address in green, or errors in red

- Auto-Complete based on the text in terminal (this leaves people watching me `docker rmi f7<Cmd-;>` breathless)

- Broadcast same keypresses into several panes (having SSH sessions to several servers)

- Making an icon jump when a long running command just finished

- etc.etc.etc.

This. I love iTerm2 and hadnt found an acceptable replacement on Linux until I installed Terminator, which I would say is 70% there.

Other than that I use Linux (Mint) for my main Desktop OS, but I still deal with plenty of rough edges. The latest ones:

- Wifi doesn't work after suspend wakeup. - After upgrading OS to next version using recommended UI method, PC us unable to start graphics mode bc it doesn't find some random UI package... i had to login in TTY and manually install it. - CS:GG, a game with Linux native port suddenly decided to get choppy lagged sound. Same game works well in Windows in same PC - Connecting bluetooth headphones sometimes works, sometimes doesn't

So yeah, plenty of rough edges. Still I use it because I love the programming workflow and use docker with Linux containers.

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