
Tilix: A tiling terminal emulator - vishalpolley
https://gnunn1.github.io/tilix-web/
======
zipperhead
I've been a long-time user of terminator on linux. I started playing around
with tilix a couple of months ago, and really liked it.

Interestingly though, what I finally realized is there is a huge amount of
value in ditching both and switching over to tmux. Tmux does everything that
tilix does but is completely independent of the underlying terminal. What I
finally realized is that tmux is not just about persistent sessions - the
screen/pane management along with completely keyboard-based navigation and
history/copy/paste commands just blows the tiling terminals away.

~~~
zokier
Highlights one of the big issues in (Linux) desktop: nested inconsistent ad-
hoc window management. Consider that in somewhat typical situation you would
have your WM/compositor at top managing windows, then something like tilix
managing its own panes/tabs, then tmux/screen also managing windows, and
finally maybe vim/emacs which also does its own window management. That is
four completely independent layers of window management, each of which does
mostly the same basic thing.

It is interesting to imagine alternative universe where we instead would have
advanced enough OS level window management that would allow deeper integration
to underlying applications. E.g. something like OS level tree style tab -like
window-management might be neat, especially if combined with powerful tiling
management.

~~~
imiric
The beauty in Linux is also the freedom to simplify your workflow as much as
you want, and not use the tools you don't need.

I've decided to only use a tiling WM for all window/pane management, and stop
using anything else, as much as possible.

So I abandoned Gnome3->Terminator->tmux in favor of bspwm->urxvt. I don't lose
the functionality that I had before (tiling terminals), and I'm using much
lighter-weight tools and less of them. I love it.

Oh, and as for editor tiling... Yeah, I still have to tile buffers in
Vim/Emacs, but only because I prefer the editing workflow in that case (all my
context / session / environment remains the same). I suppose I could have
lightweight clients, but I haven't really looked into it.

~~~
vthriller
Re: editors, sometimes you simply cannot get away with multiple windows in
place of panes, unless someone decides to do insane amount of work just to
make editor integrate-able(?) with screen/tmux/whatever WM you happen to use;
vimdiff would be a great example, as it is basically impossible to use it
without panes.

------
sjmulder
Cool project!

Given that the whole point of the tool is that it's a tiling terminal app, I'd
appreciate a few more screenshots on the page or in the readme showing the
different ways it lets me organise my terminals.

I'm a big fan of Gnome's design with the unified title and toolbars. For a
terminal app such as this, however, the fat title bar combined with the tab
bar make for a fairly large and heavy looking header. I wish it was a little
more compact.

~~~
tapoxi
I feel like people have been complaining about the massive GNOME 3 title bars
for at least six years, but the GNOME design team seems incredibly stubborn
and unwilling to listen to feedback.

~~~
rvern
You think so?

[https://blogs.gnome.org/aday/2014/08/27/gnome-design-
saving-...](https://blogs.gnome.org/aday/2014/08/27/gnome-design-saving-you-
space-since-2009-or-so/)

~~~
tapoxi
But this post compares against GNOME 2.x, which was equally awful about
wasting space. It doesn't compare against Windows or OS X, which are much
better with screen real estate and let you easily hide the taskbar or dock to
recover more.

~~~
rvern
From the blog post:

> What’s more, today’s Nautilus compares favourably with file managers from
> other operating systems/desktop environments. KDE’s Dolphin uses 109
> vertical pixels of chrome compared with Nautilus’s 48. Finder in the
> upcoming OS X version seems to have around 75 pixels.

------
Asooka
This is quite off-topic, but I'd like to point it out: please disable subpixel
anti-aliasing of fonts in images you upload to webpages. Subpixel anti-
aliasing only works when the image is displayed at 1:1 zoom on a display with
the same RGB subpixel arrangement. It fails on high-dpi displays, pentile
displays, rotated displays, etc. and produces very noticeable rainbow fringing
on the letters.

------
ginreaper
This fails the do one thing and one thing well test very badly. This entire
this can be managed by a window manager already. Managing information frames
should happen at the WM level, not the bastardized versions of it like this,
or man IDEs, or mysqlworkbench, etc

------
orf
I've been using this for the last two years as a replacement for terminator.
It's pretty damn good if you like splitting your terminals up and don't use
tmux.

It used to be called something else, but a company with the same name made a
copyright complaint.

------
andmarios
If you have to access the terminal frequently, a dropdown terminal emulator is
the way to go. Press F12, the terminal comes down. Press F11 it goes to full
screen. Press F12 again, it retracts. I use yakuake and can't imagine life
without it.

~~~
gnunn
Tilix supports this as well via a quake mode.

[https://gnunn1.github.io/tilix-
web/manual/quake/](https://gnunn1.github.io/tilix-web/manual/quake/)

------
tokenizerrr
Apologies for the off-topic, but does anyone know a nice simple terminal
emulator to use with tiling window managers such as i3? I'm using the xfce
terminal right now, but that supports tabs which gets a little confusing since
so does i3.

~~~
bitexploder
I just use gnome-terminal. It is fine. No chrome or trim. i3 and tmux to lay
out terminals. If you don't like tmux, i3 is also very good at laying things
out. Just turn off all the menus for something like gnome-terminal, which
renders things like powerline fonts fine.

~~~
tokenizerrr
I'll check it out. Thanks. It does seem similar to xfce4-terminal with it also
supporting tabs. Perhaps I should just unbind those shortcuts.

------
ktta
If tiling terminals aren't your thing, I'd suggest giving guake a go. I've
been using for a year now, and none of the other emulators have come close to
making me switch.

Protip: Use the shortcuts wisely, it makes it much better to use. I personally
use + and - on the keypad for new tab/close tab and End to hide/unhide.

~~~
madamelic
Guake is pretty killer, I'm an avid user myself.

My one big issue is this bug
([https://github.com/Guake/guake/issues/45](https://github.com/Guake/guake/issues/45))
which has an air of the user being wrong and the terminal being fine.

There are a few other nitpicks like the lack of search (no clue if other
terminals have search, but it is a feature I would kill for).

~~~
ktta
Search? What do you mean? Search inside the terminal?

~~~
madamelic
Yeah, like Ctrl-F on output.

I work on website crawlers for fun and being able to search terminal output is
something I'd die for. :)

------
SubiculumCode
It seems to me that terminals are one of those things that handles the most
sensitive of details on a server. No offense to the project (which looks very
nice), but shouldn't we prefer a terminal emulator that has been well audited
for security issues?

~~~
placeybordeaux
What attack vector are you thinking of that makes a terminal emulator more
vulnerable than any other piece of GUI software?

~~~
SubiculumCode
idk, perhaps passwords?

~~~
Tom4hawk
So which one (from those audited) do you recommend?

It's using fairly well known library (VTE), it's open source so it's not that
easy to sneak something in. Situations when your terminal emulator (it's not a
program facing Internet) can be compromised: 1\. you have something malicious
on your computer, 2\. you have something malicious on you server. But imho in
both situations you already have bigger problems than your terminal
emulator...

~~~
SubiculumCode
You know, I am no security expert. I was posing a question.

I frequently see HN comments question security of a number of applications,
none of which are as critical an interface with production servers as the
lowly terminal. For example, a recent replacement for ls was highlighted on
HN, and there were questions of whether one would want to install use an
untested application due to security concerns. In the case a terminal, it
seems to be even a bigger potential issue since it is what one frequently
types passwords in for sudo. I am quite surprised at the tone of comments.

------
LarryPage
I've been using Tilix for months now, and I love it. Fast, pretty, and works.

------
ragebol
What's the advantage over Terminator [0] ?

[0]
[https://gnometerminator.blogspot.nl/p/introduction.html](https://gnometerminator.blogspot.nl/p/introduction.html)?

~~~
moosingin3space
Terminator has not been updated in 9 years, suggesting a lack of maintenance,
and is stuck on GTK2, which means no native Wayland support. Tilix, on the
other hand, is active, GTK3-based, and works natively on my Gnome Wayland
desktop.

~~~
davewongillies
Not true. Terminator is still being actively development (albeit somewhat
slowly). GTK3 support was completed earlier on in the year and I've personally
been using it daily since.

------
CupOfJava
What's allowing the terminal to display the current git branch on the input
line?

What's allowing the pretty path view instead of my ugly ascii "~/blah1/blah2$
?

~~~
egwynn
Most shells let you do some arbitrary work before/during the display of the
prompt line (in Bash, you can use `PS1` and `PROMPT_COMMAND`). Some people
then install special fonts that let them render these fancy “bar segment”
things.
[Powerline]([https://github.com/powerline/powerline](https://github.com/powerline/powerline))
is a notable package for this, but there’s a lot of simpler alternatives out
there nowadays.

------
chaoticmass
I prefer to just open four xterm windows and arrange them 2x2.

------
kseistrup
I just installed tilix-bin from AUR. It has a blinking cursor that cannot be
unblunk in the preferences? In that case, tilix is not for me…

~~~
gnunn
There is an option for the blink mode in the preferences under Profile (i.e.
Default) since it can be configured on a per profile basis. You can set the
blink mode to use the system setting, on or off.

~~~
kseistrup
Thanks.

------
aairey
It seems ro lack multiple groups of terminals?

In Terminator you can create more than one group to broadcast input to, and it
can be across multiple tabs.

~~~
gnunn
That's correct, there is an issue open for it and if someone wants to
implement it I'm happy to take a PR for it.

------
shimon_e
I have been using this since it came out. Highly recommended. Great way to
watch many different servers at the same time.

------
cocktailpeanuts
Is there something like this but for mac?

~~~
_delirium
iTerm2:
[http://www.iterm2.com/features.html](http://www.iterm2.com/features.html)

------
ethanturner
So essentially this is terminator but a bit better looking?

~~~
Tom4hawk
And maintained :)

