I use UXTerm (XTerm with Unicode support) because it’s the only terminal emulator on Linux which is close to cmd.exe on Windows in terms of speed and low resource usage. All others, including Konsole and xfce4-terminal, seem to use massive amounts of RAM and cripple my machine when you open “too many” instances of them, which my system of scripts require. (It was the same problem on Windows; both PowerShell and Windows Terminal were literally impossible to migrate to simply because of how bloated they are.)
Apparently because it’s so minimal, it somehow doesn’t even “hook into” any GUI API, and therefore has no scrollbar. Well, at least not a native one. You can enable a scrollbar in the configuration file, but this becomes a very, very ugly and weird-behaving one which seems to switch between being on the right and left side. I hate that. I had to disable it again. So now I have no scrollbar at all.
Is there some “trick” to “assign” a scrollbar to UXTerm? I’m a bit puzzled as to how it can have a GUI window on KDE Plasma, yet not also have a scrollbar, but obviously it is possible. It does have the standard (native KDE Plasma) “minimize”, “maximize” and “close” buttons.
It’s quite amusing to compare cmd.exe on Windows in terms of speed and low resource usage.
One could be rather disapointed upon completing the the purchase of a brand new Honda Civic, and finding out that it is more resource intensive than both the skateboard and our fixed wheel bicycle.
Not being a Windows user for a while, I do remember something as simple as mounting a drive using CMD would prove most interesting.
Using konsole with 10 or even 20 tabs shouldn’t be able to achieve the status of ‘hungry RAM consumer’ by any means though… you’d do better to discuss the matter in a distribution forum to determine and troubleshoot what, your problem might be… and you need to be a good deal more specific to encourage comprehension of the issue.
I’d be interested to hear from anyone who considers XFCE4 terminal to be a heavy RAM user.
My choices are Konsole and Kitty - both are excellent for any machine.
Xfce4 terminal is the terminal of choice for many (along with rxvt-unicode for super low resource use). Be aware that the reason many of us choose to use KDE, rather than XFCE (which is infinitely more stable and suitable for a developer’s machine) is that we wish to trade.
You trade luxury for bloat - GUI is bloat, scrollbars are bloat. If you choose a terminal emulator with no bloat, then you forgo the appearance and various functionalities.
You can use the keyboard to scroll, I believe Shift with PgUp and PgDn should do the job, as should the mouse-wheel - but for a scrollbar, it’s the ugly one or none at all.
Not tabs, but instances. Otherwise they don’t group in the task manager (taskbar) group properly. It’s not like I didn’t spend countless hours evaluating Konsole and xfce4-terminal before falling back on UXTerm… I didn’t just “assume” that it’s resource-hungry; it was literally impossible to use anything but UXTerm.
And I never said anything about 10-20 ones. More like 25-100 or more.
You already have. I told you it is. And it is.
I guess my machine isn’t “any” machine, then.
I have no idea what you’re talking about. The very reason I was forced to abandon XFCE was its extreme instability and constant crashes. You seem to just say the opposite of whatever I ask about/mention.
We wish to trade? What?
Yes, I know. But I’m asking about a native scrollbar.
There is no “KDE Plasma window”, you’re conflating the widgets used in applications and the window decoration which are two separate entities. The application decides what to draw in it’s area, and KDE Plasma will stick the window controls on top. This is unlike GNOME/GTK, where the application controls the entire window area including the titlebar.
I see. Still, I was hoping for some sort of XTerm fork in the KDE universe, similar to how UXTerm is already an edition of XTerm with Unicode support, which had a more native interface while retaining the low resource usage. But maybe that’s simply technically impossible.
I dunno if it’s impossible, but there’s probably not a lot of demand for it since we already have Konsole which is quite nice for general purpose terminal usage.
The whole purpose of using [U]XTerm is that Konsole uses way too much resources. I haven’t made notes, but I also seem to remember other issues (something about not being able to start it minimized). So even if Konsole works for a human to enter commands, it’s not usable to power a system of scripts where you need many instances to open/run at the same time (grouped) without eating all the RAM. I don’t understand why this is such a “bizarre concept” to everyone. And I also don’t understand how a terminal can take so much RAM in the first place.
I know it doesn’t seem bizarre to you, because you’re accustomed to your setup. But I triage bug reports for KDE and I encounter a lot of very exotic and heavily customized system setups, and believe me when I say that yours is easily in the top 1% of them. The only person I can think of who has a more complex setup is @rokejulianlockhart.
And that’s fine! But the stronger your opinions are and the more customized your setup is, the more edge cases you’re going to end up encountering. It’s just the nature of the beast.
Anyway, the question has already been answered. UXTerm draws its own GUI privately and so it can’t use the styled GUI elements provided by Qt like Konsole and other KDE apps do.
@ExXfceUser, whereas XTerm was first released in 1984, Konsole was probably first released alongside KDE 1 in 1998. I doubt it exists solely as a response to Konsole’s supposed sluggishness.
Even if uxterm would have a scrollbar it probably wouldn’t be good enough. If ram usage is the problem ( which it’s not according to a previously mentioned “plenty”) it’d probably be something else. I really don’t understand why some with…“exotic and heavily customized” “needs” insist on using a DE to begin with. If you already consider xfce to be highly unstable I doubt you’ll get satisfied in more sofisticated DE’s. Why some …high profile clients don’t go for, say, floating wm’s like fluxbox or even better, openbox or jwm or in the case of " a zillion scripts at startup" a tiling wm where nearly everything can be done in terminals, is beyond me. Quite hard to beat those in terms of ram usage aaaaand, like I said before, since quite barebone, all to your own likings, fantasies and wet dreams. Even when something breaks. Especially when something breaks since, well…that’s your doing. Then again, there will always be ghosts in the machines so to speak for some. Ghosts everywhere.
Agree! I also think both of them have a lot of XY Problems
Atleast @rokejulianlockhart seems to always(?) accept the answers he is getting and seems like he is generally happy with his setup. @ExXfceUser on the other hand seems always frustrated and never satisfied with any answer he gets.
I am always amazed how patient the people here are. People on other forums (like Arch) get ripped apart for much much less attitude than this.
I guess luckily for both of them that I am not a mod
