Re: Terminals - Comparison ?

["John Gay" <jgay@celestica.com>]

>Just started using Debian and KDE again recently and I have a question:
What
>are the different terminals available and what are their advantages and
>disadvantages?
>
Talk about a loaded question (-;

That all depends on what you expect from a terminal. Basically, they just
provide a simulation of a shell login CLI. After that, the rest is eye
candy.

Konsole is the standard shell for KDE. It's very useful, including the
ability to open several terminals in one window using tabs to access them.

Eterm is a very pretty terminal with lots of extra eye candy. You can set
images for the background and even set transparency if you likt that sort
of thing.

Xterm is the bog standard of X. It only provides the minimal functionality,
but doen't need a lot of extra libs to run.

Gnome has thier own. But I think at this point konsole and Gnome term are
pretty similar in use and functionality.

Of course there is probably a lot list of others that I have never even
heard of.

>So far, I've just been using Konsole, as that's the one I get get by
clicking on
>the menu bar (I've got a default set-up right now).  My only complaint
right now
>is that the 'Page Up' and 'Page Down' keys do not work, but what else
should I
>expect from my term?  What kinds of flexibilities should I expect?
>
Well, Page Up and Page Down usually doesn't work in a regular terminal
either. At least not the way you might think they should. Actually you need
to use <Shift> Page Up and <Shift> Page Down, I think, to get the terminal
to scroll. At least that's how I do it. This is a feature of the console,
not a limitation of the terminal program. It was a little strange to me at
first, but now it's become second nature that I try to do it on M$Windows
boxes all the time now (-;

>Feel free to educate me.
>
If it's education you want, search the web. There are lots of sites with
loads of information. Doing a google for xterm should give a rather
comprehensive list of terminal programs. Check their sites for info. There
are also quite a few UNIX teaching sites as well. Anything about UNIX can
usually be applied directly to a Linux box.


Cheers,

      John Gay