Comment by zh3 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by zh3 | Hacker News Reader

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I keep a 'perfect terminal' in the office, basically a system with an nvidia 7600 in it because that's the fastest 2D text thing I've found to date (yes, modern cards are so slow in text mode it's not even funny). Configured for 24 VT's, a bunch of them autoconnect to remote systems/run specific applications etc at boot - so if I want the calculator, for example, it's Alt-F12.

For local graphics programs, that also provides a memory-mapped framebuffer which makes basic graphics a doddle. Beyond that, text-mode browsing has been too hard work for years (and so by extension email too). While it's very possible to 'cheat' by setting X to render to a framebuffer (either directly or in the background) the whole reason to use the text-only console is to focus on code without computer-borne interruptions.

Even on my graphical computer, it's basically terminals windows and a browser. Any piece of software that interrupts the flow is either configured to not do so, or discarded PDQ.

Terminals FTW.

What do you mean by fast or slow in text mode? Like the 7600 is literally writing text to the screen faster than modern cards or?

Yeah... modern graphics cards have really limited text mode implementations and even worse, often broken ones that don't display the correct colors even (can find many complaints of those running "classic" games etc). There are/were a LOT of basic text modes that were supported up until they were largely deprecated and only very basic implementations exist now... and often are slow to render walls of text. It's kind of wild.

No idea if op refers to that. I don’t think so, but modern stack can be ineffective.

My work mbp M1 was having a delay writing text in external monitor

While all the rest, including vidéo, was display without delay.

I had to tweak some driver settings ( of the base , not my graphic card )

Did you happen to write down what you tweaked? I use an MBP M1 with an external 4K, and I've had a sneaking suspicion that my keyboard inputs are somewhat delayed. Just hasn't ever felt quite right....

You can use slow-mo mode on your phone camera to confirm your suspicion (or use an app[1]). Just record yourself pressing a button with your keyboard in front of the screen in slow motion.

[1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/is-it-snappy/id1219667593?plat...

yeah It was silly, the displayLink drivers of the docking station had to get an update specifically for those models. In my case there was no mistake possible: there was a solid second between typing something and actually see the text on the screen. Unusable as is.

Yes, much much faster. The 7600GT will do about 900k characters per second (stock) or 600k at 160x60 using ter-u20b font. Last time I tested, a GTX580 does about 187k per second but that's in stock 80x25 VGA mode without a framebuffer; to get a direct framebuffer the only option I'm aware of is nouveau, and that drops the rate to about 14k per second (so only just better than the equivalent of 1FPS at 160x60, as thast's about 10k characters on screen at once).

Some of the kernel changes that are happening may well make it possible to have simple high-speed framebuffers that can be used for text consoles in the future, so there's still hope.

Reading commends like this makes me so grateful I never got into the whole terminal deal and grew up coding on shitty computers.

In my blissful ignorance I could produce just as much effective code on a VNC machine competing with a 1080p Netflix stream on a rural DSL line as I could on a local machine in TTY mode.

The brain is really amazing at what it can adapt to, when I'm typing in a laggy situation it's like "see" the output of what I've typed before it's on the screen and end up being comfortable doing stuff like fixing a typo before it's even been reflected on the screen

Indeed, I started in the days of 40x25 video terminals at home, and new-fangled stuff like modems were only just starting to appear (my first one was 300 baud). Getting a job and having 9600 baud VT100 terminals was truely magic (they still have a teletype for printing work orders on).

However, I've never been tolerant of lag - having a time gap between doing something and having a response just adds to mental workload, it's friction between me and the machine (especially pronounced with IDE's that try to 'help' by taking a second or two to come up with a suggestion, by which time it'll have been left in the dust).

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