
Are You Using iTerm2? - oscar-the-horse
http://www.horsesaysinternet.com/command-line/are-you-using-iterm2/
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exogen
I used to use iTerm2 (or maybe it was still iTerm then), but eventually
Terminal was just good enough. I think people who have used iTerm2 for a while
might forget that Terminal improves with every new version of OS X; it's not
just some stagnant app that Apple ignores.

For example, Terminal on Lion includes 256 color mode and split panes. And it
actually has cool features like restoring the scrollback buffers in each tab
you had open if you quit or restart.

So yeah, I consider Terminal good enough these days.

~~~
__david__
> And it actually has cool features like restoring the scrollback buffers in
> each tab you had open if you quit or restart.

Yeah that is an amazing feature and almost has me switching back. I can only
hope they add that to iTerm2--it seems such an obvious good thing.

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makecheck
Note that my own terminal MacTerm (<http://www.macterm.net/>) also supports
most of the iTerm2 features from this post. Though I feel my Full Screen
support is nicer: I provide options such as a scroll bar when full-screen, and
I do _not_ use Lion's widget so the switch is instantaneous and has proper
multi-display support (i.e. you can have a full-screen terminal on two
displays if you want to).

I don't have split-panes, though they're on my list. There are a handful of
other features I don't have, but also vice-versa. In the end I won't say
either app is better, but I definitely think there isn't one terminal everyone
will like.

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jvoorhis
Split panes are cool, but the killer feature that I would jump ship for is
full screen mode for dual monitors on Lion.

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johntyree
Out of curiosity, why do you need a terminal that spans two monitors?

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jvoorhis
One full-screen terminal per monitor. When you enter full-screen mode with
iTerm, the second monitor shows the linen background.

~~~
makecheck
That behavior is enforced by Lion itself, and that is one reason why I don't
support Lion's mechanism (another being that the transition animation is way
too slow). I've reported these problems as bugs to Apple long ago, and I have
seen no action. I decided it was more important for Full Screen to be _right_
than it was to adhere to some fancy but broken standard approach.

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justin_vanw
Plus, iTerm 2 segfaults! All the time and for no clear reason! And the
performance is far, far worse than Terminal.app!

~~~
thaumaturgy
Sorry to hear that. Not that it diminishes your experience at all, but I've
been using iTerm2 daily for a couple of years without any trouble like this.

I had to try to diagnose a glitchy Mac once where some funky fonts installed
by MS Office ended up being the cause for crashing various programs. Any
chance that could be what's going on for you?

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jc4p
I use TotalTerminal (<http://totalterminal.binaryage.com/>) and have it set up
to show up on the bottom 1/3 of my screen with a transparent background when I
hit the "Eject" key that I never use for anything else. As far as I can tell,
I also have colors and split panes, though I rarely use them.

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NinetyNine
First off, both iTerm and TotalTerminal were very useful and fairly well done.

On Mac OSX Lion though, Terminal.app supports 256 colors and split pane
(although only vertical stacks). I don't know what use growl gives me, but
having to update it was annoying.

What I do miss from TT and iTerm is the visor mode bound to a shortcut key.
Both had downsides though: TT would mess up copy and paste, iTerm would just
crash sometimes, you couldn't have the visor down while typing something on
another screen. All in all I decided it wasn't worth the trouble to reinstall
either when I switched to Lion.

~~~
oscar-the-horse
on growl you can turn updates off. they are really annoying: they continue to
pop up even if you close out the notification, that gets even more annoying.

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DrinkWater
iTerm2 is a fantastic Application. I did not experience any slowdowns,
segfaults or anything, and i am a heavy user.

I refuse to update to Lion, so i cant judge the new Terminal from Apple. But
on Snow leopard, Terminal is inferior to iTerm2.

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ruckusing
Yes, I've been using it for over a year now. And it has been quite stable.

Its killer feature for me is command+N to go to that tab.

I've never understood why Apple has not implemented commnad+N in Terminal.app

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famedriver
I have been using iTerm 2 full time for many months. Super stable. The full
screen mode with panes is wonderful. George Nachman has done a wonderful job
and is very responsive with any problems.

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johntyree
I don't get it. OSX users didn't have screen? Or the ability to full screen a
window?

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theDoug
Yes. I am.

