mrxvt vs gnome-terminal: one man's preferences

Last week I switched from using gnome-terminal to mrxvt. I found that (as near as I could tell at least) gnome-terminal tended to slow down over time. (Or it might've been fvwm, or some interaction between the two. In any case, it seemed to take longer and longer to change workspaces in fvwm. Not, like, seconds or anything, but still noticable slowness.)

And even ignoring that possibly-wrong (and definitely subjective) data point, it definitely scrolled slowly. It's a sad thing when the speed of a compile depends on how fast the terminal it's running in can scroll text.

So I switched to mrxvt and now life is slightly faster and slightly less annoying. :)

Once I made the switch I wished I'd done so sooner. Before gnome-terminal, I'd used xterm, which allows you to set the cursor color and mouse color, tweaks I'd never found in gnome-terminal, and to which I'd waved a fond bye-bye as a result. But mrxvt can do both.

I'd probably stick with xterm except it doesn't do tabs, which I've come to enjoy. (Also, if I switched back, I bet I'd immediately find several other things mrxvt (or even gnome-terminal) do better, but the tabs are the most obvious.)

tags: mrxvt  gnometerminal  

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