xterm-snapshots VS iTerm2

My journey of using terminal emulators began together with my introduction to Linux about 7 years ago. GNOME terminal was my first as it came pre-installed on Ubuntu, my first Linux distribution. Since then, I've had the opportunity to explore and utilize a range of terminal emulators, including Alacritty, Kitty, st, Konsole, xterm, and most recently iTerm2. It's been interesting to experiment with these different emulators, each offering its unique features (or similar however with each with personal touch), user interfaces, and performance benchmarks. Just the other day, a new terminal emulator caught my attention: Warp Terminal. My curiosity won, and Warp was downloaded, this short blog are my thoughts about Warp terminal. At the moment there is only support for macOS, however linux and windows builds are on the way.

https://github.com/ThomasDickey/xterm-snapshots/commit/82ba5...

Before he thought of a UTF-8 encode taking 4x the space, now he assumes 6x. This not a fix!

iTerm2 + Oh-My-Zsh

The correct response to false allegations followed by insults and threats is anything but to admit it. The software in question is a popular free and open source software that has more than a decade of trust. It's maintained by a single developer in his spare time. It's a feature that fundamentally requires the user to actively engage with in order to use it [1], with no nagging or coercion whatsoever. In fact, the only people reminding us of its existence are the Mastodon mobs, not iTerm.

The feature wasn't added out of pure hype either. It was likely inspired by user feedback [2], and the dev ultimately added it because it was useful for him personally [3].

Despite all of this, people are raging about unprovable nefarious motives and making claims about spyware, as if it's Windows. Some are even openly fantasizing about physical violence.

This kind of behavior should be condemned, not praised.

[1]: https://github.com/gnachman/iTerm2/blob/a3122c0100d8900a15cb...

[2]: https://gitlab.com/gnachman/iterm2/-/issues/6955

[3]: https://techhub.social/@gnachman/109542492387391561

> iTerm 3.5.1 removes automatic OpenAI integration, requires opt-in

This is an editorialized title. It was opt-in from the very beginning. Here's all the steps that was originally required:

1. Open settings, go to the General tab, click on the AI button.

2. Enter a paid API key

3. Close the settings

4. Click "Toolbelt" on the menu bar, and click on "Codecierge"

5. Click "Toolbelt" on the menu bar again, and click "Show toolbelt"

6. In the toolbelt, there's a textbox that you can type questions into. The textbox won't be shown if you didn't enter an API key. Only after submitting the question will the OpenAI integration be activated.

https://github.com/gnachman/iTerm2/blob/a3122c0100d8900a15cb...

The initial implementation already took many many clicks to run. I literally had to do nothing to not use the feature and not once was I reminded about the feature after I chose to ignore it.

Despite that, people were spreading rumors that entering an invalid API key would instantly cause iTerm to send all data to OpenAI. It's a straight up lie started by people who actually tested the feature and posted their findings the GitLab thread about this feature.

https://gitlab.com/gnachman/iterm2/-/issues/11475

https://gitlab.com/gnachman/iterm2/-/issues/11470

People in the GitLab thread were calling for dogpiles and fantasizing about inflicting violence on Mastodon. Towards the sole maintainer of a popular free and open source software developed in his spare time.

https://archive.is/https://tau-ceti.space/@ics/*

Some of the things you see online... I have no words.

Don't overlook the awesome "automatically bury session" option, which hides the "actual" iTerm2 window running the tmux control plane: https://iterm2.com/documentation-buried-sessions.html and this is the preference I mean: https://github.com/gnachman/iTerm2/blob/v3.5.2/Interfaces/Pr...

I also have dedicated .ssh/config entries for ensuring that ssh connects directly to tmux:

  Host whatever-mux

iTerm2[2] and I'm astonished there's less mention of it on this thread (though there is some).

That is mainly because I switched mostly to Linux a few years ago, and you'd think the lack of a good terminal app wouldn't be the biggest pain point of switching from Mac to Linux, but it absolutely is.

There's no terminal app on Linux even close to as good as iTerm2.

[2]: https://iterm2.com/ but it's v3 tho ¯\_(ಠ_ಠ)_/¯

A modern terminal shell such as zsh, iTerm2 with oh-my-zsh for Mac, or Hyper for Windows

The project is FOSS and the feature is disabled without the key installed. https://github.com/gnachman/iTerm2

Have you used iTerm2? Saw the amount of work that's put into it? Checked how long it has been maintained by basically one person for more than a decade? The iTerm2 developer is a person you can actually trust.

https://github.com/gnachman/iTerm2/graphs/contributors

But all of a sudden you now have people up in arms about how a spyware of a feature was sneakily forced upon them, and be righteous about it. This is sad.

Iterm2 is a terminal emulator for macOS. It’s kind of a replacement for your original terminal. It comes with a bunch of cool features and customizations that we will go over later

For Linux users, your default terminal is just fine. The only thing I would install is oh-my-zsh with the autocomplete plugin. For my Mac friends out there, iTerm is an amazing software that works well with oh-my-zsh as well.