Terminal Preferences

April 4th, 2022
cli, tech
I do most of my coding, writing, etc on the command line, so: some views on terminals.

I like having lots of terminals side-by-side, to see many different things simultaneously. Most places I've worked have kept code to 80 columns, with two-space indentation, which is a good fit for my approach. Here's how I usually have my terminals set up:

The monitor is 27", at 2560x1440 ("QHD"). This has room for five 83x101 terminals, though I usually divide my rightmost terminal vertically for long-running commands or interactive prompts.

On traditional resolution (non-retina) displays, I have a strong preference for bitmap fonts without antialiasing. They are much clearer at a given size, which allows fitting much more text on a screen. In iterm2 this means selecting Monaco Regular at 10pt, and leaving the "antialiased" box unchecked, under Profiles > Text.

At some point I could see moving to a higher resolution display, but probably not until 5K monitors (my current resolution, but 4x the pixels) are widely available and reasonably cheap. High resolution displays are a bit nicer, but I don't mind the regular kind.

Aside from moving from Linux to Mac, and getting wider monitors, this is a setup I've had for a long time.

Referenced in:

Comment via: facebook, lesswrong, substack

Recent posts on blogs I like:

On Apologizing To Kids

Everyone is so weird about apologizing to children.

via Thing of Things August 25, 2025

Against the Teapot Hold in Contra Dancing

The teapot hold is the most dangerous common contra dancing figure, so I’ve been avoiding it. The teapot hold, sometimes called a "courtesy turn hold,” requires one dancer to connect with their hand behind their back. When I realized I could avoid put…

via Emma Azelborn August 25, 2025

Little Puppy

She's very little and she likes to do stuff with me. She also likes to bark around and run around and jump around. She also likes to go to places with me and that's all I have.

via Nora Wise's Blog Posts August 23, 2025

more     (via openring)