Terminals and Types

[Lost In Cyberia]

Hey everyone,

So I'm a bit confused about the settings of linux terminals. I have two terminals installed on my system. I can open either. I have Guake and I have terminator. But when I do echo $TERM, on both terminals it displays that the terminal is xterm.

It was my understanding that xterm is a much older console, so why are both terminals displaying that they're xterm? Are they both using the xterm source or something?

I don't have the experience, but do other terminals like rxvt, wterm, konsole etc... do they all use xterm as well? Why does xterm seem like the "base" for other terminals? Are these other terminals, more like wrappers over the original xterm code?

Thanks for the responses ahead of time

[cooper]

"xterm" isn't what it is but how it acts.

Specific terminal types (which is what the TERM variable signifies) have specific features. A prime example is to change your TERM to vt100 and then access a long man page. Try using the page-up and page-down keys. Doesn't work, does it? This is because a vt100 terminal doesn't have those keys. Change it back to xterm, open the man page again and now things work again.

Start reading here.

[Lost In Cyberia]

"xterm" isn't what it is but how it acts.

Specific terminal types (which is what the TERM variable signifies) have specific features. A prime example is to change your TERM to vt100 and then access a long man page. Try using the page-up and page-down keys. Doesn't work, does it? This is because a vt100 terminal doesn't have those keys. Change it back to xterm, open the man page again and now things work again.

Start reading here.

Hmm I see... So, most "terminal emulators" (guake, terminator, termite etc..) will always use some other predefined "terminal type" (xterm, vt100, )

I'm assuming that xterm though was at once point a terminal emulator as well though, because it's listed here as an application:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Category:Terminal_emulators

I'm also assuming that the terminal emulator applications can support multiple and different terminal types?

So in general, we people fuss over what terminal emulator they like best.. does this mean that they're actually arguing about the terminal type that the terminal application is using? Does it also mean that, besides graphically, that in general terminal emulators are pretty much the same? If two terminal emulators are both using xterm...doesn't that mean that both terminal emulators are providing the same functionality?

What do you use Cooper? Just curious...

[cooper]

I vehemently, passionately *HATE* all those fancy schmanzy terminal emulators. Much like there is only the one true editor (vim to the infidels) there is only one true terminal emulator which is that very application: xterm.

I typically invoke it like this

xterm -fn -*-fixed-bold-*-*-*-*-100-*-*-*-*-*-* -fg white -bg black

which uses the bog-standard font, in bold, white letters against a black background.

People like the tabs feature of many terminal emulators, but I prefer to switch desktop (<ALT>-<F1> to <F12>), negating the need for terminal tabs. Often the very first characters I press on a terminal is <ALT>-<Enter> to full-screen the thing, hiding the window manager's distracting nonsense (and I'm using Fluxbox, so there's very little of that to begin with) and increasing the screen real-estate by 2 lines. Compared to most people I'm quite the minimalist so much of this probably won't be appreciated by most, but I like it.

[Lost In Cyberia]

I vehemently, passionately *HATE* all those fancy schmanzy terminal emulators. Much like there is only the one true editor (vim to the infidels) there is only one true terminal emulator which is that very application: xterm.

I typically invoke it like this

xterm -fn -*-fixed-bold-*-*-*-*-100-*-*-*-*-*-* -fg white -bg black

which uses the bog-standard font, in bold, white letters against a black background.

People like the tabs feature of many terminal emulators, but I prefer to switch desktop (<ALT>-<F1> to <F12>), negating the need for terminal tabs. Often the very first characters I press on a terminal is <ALT>-<Enter> to full-screen the thing, hiding the window manager's distracting nonsense (and I'm using Fluxbox, so there's very little of that to begin with) and increasing the screen real-estate by 2 lines. Compared to most people I'm quite the minimalist so much of this probably won't be appreciated by most, but I like it.

Lol, Cooper, why am I not suprised :P I'm currently using openbox as a DE so it's fairly minimal as well, but the OS I use comes with Terminator, which in turn uses xterm by default.

To supplement what you said Cooper, I present this:

http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/93376/which-terminal-type-am-i-using