rxvt vs. aterm

Forum: DSL Ideas and Suggestions
Topic: rxvt vs. aterm
started by: mikshaw

Posted by mikshaw on Dec. 23 2004,04:37

After a small annoyance with rxvt today I started wondering if perhaps aterm might be a better choice for a DSL x terminal. I don't hate rxvt, but I'm beginning to wonder if it really beats aterm with a size/features ratio.

Let's consider the pros and cons of each...

rxvt: Arguably the smallest x terminal available, at 82k.
Uses very little ram.
Depends on only 3 external libs.

aterm: Not as small as rxvt, at 112k.
Difference in ram use is nearly nil....something like 30 bytes (or was that kb?)
Twice as many libs needed, though all are available in DSL.
Has transparency.

One thing (apart from the transparency) that I think really puts aterm over rxvt is what I think is a bug in rxvt. It would not properly read an environment variable exported from .bash_profile unless it was launched as a login shell. I tested this out to make sure that aterm wasn't being run as login by issuing a command from .bash_profile. Neither term registered the command, as it should be unless run as a login shell. However, exporting a variable from .bash_profile should affect all subsequent shells, login or not, but rxvt did not accept it until I exported that variable from one shell and then launched rxvt from the same shell. Aterm had no trouble reading the variable.

So maybe it's something to think about....is a few extra K's that bad when you get a superior product?

Personally I'll continue to use only aterm whether it's included with DSL or not, but I just thought it'd be something to consider.

Posted by cbagger01 on Dec. 23 2004,05:49

If we were going to replace rxvt, my vote would be to try out "materm" also known as "mrxvt". This is an xterminal program that supports transparency and tabbed windows, so you can easily switch between multiple terminal sessions.

Since I have never used it, I don't know if it has the rxvt export bug. Sure looks cool, though.

Posted by ico2 on Dec. 24 2004,14:46

maybe some mydsl extensions first?