Manjaro i3: what’s a good terminal alternative to urxvt that is similarly lightweight/keyboard-focused but more configurable at run-time

Support Software & Applications
#1

Using i3 Manjaro community edition — what a great edition.

Question: urxvt seems a great terminal; Arch seems to love it. But why? Is it because it is very lightweight/small footprint, and/or it is a keyboard-only-focused (ie, h,j,k,l warrior) ?

nothing against being a keyboard-only h,j,k,l warrior — I am one, in fact. Maybe it wasn’t obvious from my preference for i3 :smiley:

The issue I see is that urxvt is hard to customize at run-time; it seems have to modify ~/.Xresources painfully by hand, then restart X. I’m all for dotfile-style text configs, but surely not as raw as .Xresources

So… in light of this, am I missing some fundamental benefit to sticking with urxvt ? Is there a way more user-friendly and customizable terminal that sticks true to being lightweight and keyboard-only (h,j,k,l warrior) focused?

EDIT: Preferably a terminal that can hide File | Edit | … menu . Those definitely look out of place in i3.

#2

I use alacrity. It’s much easier to configure.

1 Like
#3

Personally I like kitty allot good customization options (including keymapping for instance) and easy to use imo.

https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/

Almost forgot.
It also plays very nice with Ranger. For (in terminal) image preview for instance all you need is pillow and set preview_images_method kitty in your rc.conf

desk
desk1908×1070 320 KB

4 Likes
#4

I am using tilix. It probably not the lightest one but it is easy to configure, lot of options and, if you want it, keyboard oriented. Additionally it plays nice with i3

tilix
tilix1600×900 625 KB

2 Likes
#5

Thanks so far for all the suggestions: alacrity, kitty, tilix — some new toys to play with today on my breaks =)

Keep the suggestions coming in hehe.

Btw, that desktop :open_mouth: I just see it and want to do work. :smiley:

#6

lol, thx

Just browsing the forum a little in between work.

1 Like
#7

Hi!
Imho termite or alacritty

1 Like
#8

I was going to use alacritty, but it doesn’t have ligature support, so I’ve been using Kitty for the past year or so. I hear st has ligature support now too, so I may give that a try sometime.

1 Like
#9

A little off topic, but out of curiosity: is that i3? How do you have such a cool bottom bar? :smiley:

#10

Did not get a notice since your replying to yourself, but I guess you meant me? :thinking:
If so thx :wink:

Yes it is i3 with Gaps enabled (can disable on the fly if i want with a key combo) and picom with experimental backends active for rounded corners and blur effect.

The bar is polybar

1 Like
#11

Thanks! Yes, haha… I did not mean to reply to myself >.<

Ok cool, i3 manjaro has picom working and i have the i3-gaps. For another fun break (read: procrastination) I will investigate polybar :slight_smile:

Best regards