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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Whatever comes with your distro or desktop environment ought to be enough for anybody.
Unless you have a minimal window manager that comes with only xterm. Then I'd install xfce4-terminal to get tabs and more reasonably sized text. If for some reason the distro or OS only has sh, I'll also go ahead and install bash, but nothing fancier than that.
I’m just using it for general terminal stuff, nothing terribly fancy.
OP, to be frank, descriptions like "general terminal stuff" and "nothing terribly fancy" are too generic to be useful here. Though, I suppose this is simply indicative that you're (probably) perfectly served (as is) by Konsole.
what do you folks use
and more importantly, why do you use that over the (many) other options available?
Because it came with the distro and I had no need for something different.
One feature that might be nice is some kind of local LLM integration so I can get help on how to tinker with settings and such where i’m doing the tinkering instead of constantly tabbing out to duck.ai or w/e.
Unsure if I understood you correctly, but perhaps Warp and Wave are worth looking into for ya.
The one that comes with your DE is generally just fine, unless you're a serious terminal user.
One feature that might be nice is some kind of local LLM integration so I can get help on how to tinker with settings and such
I think that's a quick way to nuke your install, LLMs are generally wrong about what commands to run and don't understand enough to know when something is dangerous. All it takes is changing one wrong file and everything breaks.
I like minimal terminals, was using st for a long time and now I'm using foot for quite a while already. Since I'm using tmux I don't need my terminal to have any tab/windowing features
My terminal of choice nowadays is Alacritty. It's nice and clean, has a text based config file and decent feature support. The only annoyance is the lack of tabs, but I spend most of my terminal time ssh'd into a tmux session on a remote server anyway.
i just use xterm. it has proper unicode support now and is very lightweight. or maybe urxvt if i need more features.
on termux where xterm doesn't run i use st instead, it needs some source patching (very barebones) but it works pretty well.
Are you serious? It's just a window where text is printed. Use what your DE provides. Now I'm mostly on LXQt, so I use QTerminal. With tiling WMs I prefer urxvt because I don't need builtin window splitting ans tabs. I can't imagine what other features may I need.
That was my reaction. Since I use Cinnamon and Gnome I use gnome-terminal.
The features I like are cut/paste and the open in terminal feature in the file manger. Nice that it looks good in your DE too. What else does one need?
I like guake, or yakuake.. they are inspired by the console in Quake. F9 drops it down and hides it. Works for what i need it to. I'm just a guy who recently ditched windows, not a power user.
kitty. The ssh kitten is enough reason to use it. I work ob a lot of different systems that require OTP. Using the ssh kitten I can type the OTP once and can spawn new terminals that ssh and cd to the remote direvtory without logging in again. Obviosly the tabs and window panes are are a must too. There's tons of other useful features that I like, like using hints to select nunbers, filenames, urls, etc in the terminal output.
I use Xfce and Cinnamon, but I always install Gnome Terminal regardless (you don't need all of Gnome desktop to use it). The main reason I like Gnome Terminal is that it is very simple, and it lets you save your own terminal themes and switch between them from a context menu. Xfce terminal is nice and simple, but doesn't have this really handy theme switching feature.
That said, the terminal emulator I used most often is the Emacs built-in terminal emulator (term-mode), because it integrates flawlessly with other Emacs tools. But its rendering and theming isn't as nice as Gnome terminal, so I only recommend it if you are an Emacs user.
Alacritty, one of the first rust based terminals. Fast, simple config. Had no problems. Foot as a second if you want an alternative.
Im using what DE provides by default. If You do not know what You need from terminal that means You probably do not need anything more. Make a switch when You want something particular. On the other note I think You might be more interested in different shell rather than terminal. So fir example zsh or fish (You are most likely currently using bash)
Konsole, because it fits in nicely with Plasma (as you would expect) and does everything I need a terminal to do.
I use xfce4-terminal, lxterminal is also good for the same reasons. The nice thing about them is that their configs are very stable (this can be a bit of an issue with KDE, e.g. I recently had to redo my editor themes for Kate because the old ones weren't compatible anymore), and they save system resources by letting all terminals run in one process. Running terminal windows in separate processes might protect you from crashes, but even though I use terminals heavily I just never have terminal crashes. And they're simpler to configure than e.g. urxvt.