Hacker News Reader

Comment by amitizle | Hacker News Reader

I'm not trying to annoy, I swear. I am using Alacritty for a few years. With tmux config that is moving with me for +- 8 years, except for speed of a terminal emulator, I can't understand the difference between them (other than iTerm2 which is nice but has way too many features)

View on HN

wezterm has a unique great feature of programmable configuration (lua), which allows (among many things) to have custom keybindings depending on the foreground process, then there is also some keybinding modality (in Contour as well), then some have quick command panels, then there are various levels of tab support, then there are a bunch of other UI improvement...

But if iTerm2 has too many features, implying you don't care that much about them, you might not be invested enough to learn about the difference (there are many little things and not a great comparison of various terminals for an easy read)

I was going to comment something similar. I use iTerm2 day to day for work, and gnome-terminal on my personal Linux box.

What's a compelling reason to switch terminals? Or maybe: is there a compelling reason not to switch?

> is there a compelling reason not to switch?

Your terminal emulator is one of the most security sensitive things you use. Sudo password? SSH keys? logs? A lot goes through your terminal, so I think about 5 times before trying out new terminals.

The major reason I switched from iTerm to Alicritty is the config. I use cmd as my tmux key. This was really annoying to get working in iTerm and was brittle. It required all of macos overrides, iTerms overrides, Tmux config, and Karabiner Elements to get it how I liked it. With Alacritty, it's all done with a clean Alacritty config and a couple of macos-level overrides (I use cmd-q and cmd-h differently in Terminal). Also, the vim+tmux combo is noticeably faster in Alacritty. I'm very interested in Contour.

> The major reason I switched from iTerm to Alacritty is the config.

Exactly the same for me! My terminal config *must* be in version control. But iTerm2 keeps it in some sort of Apple Plist crap. It has a "dynamic JSON profile" feature but it's hard to use correctly.

Switching to Alacritty from iTerm2 has been fantastic; I don't miss anything. I don't use tabs; I use tmux. I need an OS-wide "hotkey" but a few lines of hammerspoon seem to do that perfectly.

I currently use iTerm AND Alacritty. If the latter supported tabs, I'd use that exclusively.

Tilling window manager?

I use i3.

I've never been able to get into window managers. I prefer the system default.

If you program, i3 is great.

Trivial to learn and just works.

Xmonad is much, much more difficult.

It depends what kinds of things you find compelling but I would guess probably nothing if you haven't already been sucked into the terminal emulator rabbit hole. iTerm2 and gnome terminal are both perfectly functional for 100% of the tasks you will actually need them for.

for one, being able to have an identical user experience across all platforms

Good point. I share my shell config between Linux and macOS so my UX is mostly the same. Gnome-terminal and iTerm2 act similarly enough that it doesn't really bother me moving between the two.

alacritty's configurability is incredibly good, also the scrolling and crispness in rendering is a godsend, particularly if you're a heavy user or even just do long tails.

I like native tabs so that I can compartmentalize multiple tmux sessions. Alacritty with tabs would be perfect. Kitty seems to be that - but it’s got some oddities of it’s own.

> I like native tabs so that I can compartmentalize multiple tmux sessions. Alacritty with tabs would be perfect. Kitty seems to be that - but it’s got some oddities of it’s own.

Gotcha. I'm using tmux sessions for that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com