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Ask Slashdot: What Terminal Emulator Do You Use?

Posted by Soulskill on from the whichever-happens-to-be-installed dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Although I spend a considerable amount of my time at work using shell commands and other text-based applications, I've never really given much thought to what terminal emulator I use. A recent article over on Opensource.com rounded up their picks for their seven favorite terminals, but I'm still unsure if it really matters which one I pick. Do you have a favorite terminal emulator, and if so, what makes it your favorite? I'm interested in hearing about that "one killer feature" that really sold you on your choice.

7 of 352 comments (clear)

  1. ZOC by nbvb · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ZOC is hands down my favorite terminal emulator.

    Best emulation, including ANSI. Full scrollback buffers. Zmodem support. Runs on OS/2 *AND* OS X. Love it.

    1. Re:ZOC by ilsaloving · · Score: 3, Interesting

      OMG... ZOC is still around? I haven't used that since... well... since I used OS/2 Warp 2.1

      And they still use REXX! http://www.emtec.com/zoc/

  2. Windows by The+MAZZTer · · Score: 2, Interesting

    This is more of a Linux thing, Windows users are mostly locked to the OS-provided console UI, but there are a couple apps out there. I used Console2 for a bit, which has a bunch of features over a standard Console window, then I found ConEmu which is what I like to use now. I configured it to work like a Quake-style console which is fun and easily accessible.

  3. The Entire Subject Article is Wrong by idontgno · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Every candidate they list is a local console application using a local framebuffer desktop system.

    Real terminal emulators are network detached from a headless server system.

    I use PuTTY SSH from Windows, command-line OpenSSH from a native (non-graphical) console for Linux, or VxConnectBot on my Android phone (which has a slider keyboard).

    Sometimes I'll actually use an old-school serial-port terminal emulator on an old Amiga to connect to my "desperation serial port" console on my home server. Weird how that thing will be working when must network-based ttys are down.

    --
    Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
  4. tty by bunratty · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If you have the misfortune of running a GUI, you can quickly get to a tty with Ctrl-Alt-F1. Who needs emulation?

    --
    What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
  5. PuTTy by darkain · · Score: 3, Interesting

    PuTTy. It isn't a "terminal emulator" in the sense that it is the terminal for the local machine. It is used for connecting to all those remote headless servers out there. I'm personally locked into Windows on my workstation for the time being due to other Windows only software requirements, so this is a good bridging application to access all the Linux, FreeBSD, vSphere, and SmartOS machines that I work with.

  6. JuiceSSH is a nice terminal app by ZahrGnosis · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I use JuiceSSH on my phone, which is amazingly useful more often than it should be necessary. It falls fairly low on that link, for some reason, so maybe I should check the others out.

    puTTY on Windows.

    Otherwise I'm connected directly to a linux box and just SSH out from a native command line. I don't tend to boot into X unless really necessary, and then I'm normally just stuck with xterm until I can get out of it.

    And I don't know when the last time I had to terminal from an apple product is, so I don't even know any more for that one.