Sorry folks, I’m pissed today but I will try to keep this as civil as possible ('cause if I don’t those certain ppl which like to flag posts but never want to talk about it and also don’t even have the decency to say “thanks” when you delete a post just for them, will be back in action again…)
So, what did I want to talk about? Ah, yes, Konsole, the “powerful and customizable” (short PAC, not to be confused with POS!) terminal emulator by KDE.
So I use this 'cause it’s there preinstalled with Plasma. I don’t use the terminal that much so I don’t really care which terminal (or terminal emulator? Whatever the difference is if there is any…) I use. Well, until now at least.
So I open this “powerful” thingy and use the not so secret spell yay-Syu to update my system. It loads, it scrolls, it shows a lot of lines of text which are flashing by with warp9.
Then it happens: My red, dry and tired eyes catch a glimpse of text that looks suspicious. An error message? I’m not sure 'cause I can’t read that fast. Nobody can read that fast. Except for Howard Stephen Berg maybe…
Anyway, when the magic is done, I try to scroll up to read the message just to realize that IT’S NOT THERE ANYMORE 'cause for some stupid reason Konsole can’t or won’t keep the full output!?!
Srsly, WTFF?? Why give me all those lines but don’t keep 'em so I can read 'em? Who decides to ship a terminal (emulator?) with such settings? And why?? Is it for ppl running Plasma on a computer from 1989 with 16kb of RAM?
So yeah, I’m sure there’s a setting somewhere to change this…although it’s not in “General”. Another thing I could rant about…sticking settings in the most inappropriate, stupid places.
But anyhow, I don’t wanna use Konsole anymore. I hate it now! Hah! So is there any terminal (emulator) with a bit more sane standard settings? Which one do you guys use?
I recommend to do scollback like i do in Fixed size.
Why?
Choose unlimited and read it’s warning, it will be stored in unencripted temp file instead of RAM, which is perhaps a bad idea…
Oh yes, i wonder why though…coz that’s such an obvious functionality.
I spend about 2-3 hours every day using Konsole. I’ve used many others, and Konsole is, by far, the best terminal emulator in existence. You can customise and tweak pretty much any aspect of it. If you need bigger scrollback, this is the option to change:
I’m quite happy with 50000 lines, it’s much more than I’ll ever need. How high you can increase it is only limited by your available RAM. If you need even more, set it to Unlimited, which is limited only by your available disk space. However, if you do that, it will be written in an unencrypted temporary file which will exist until Konsole is closed. This may or may not be a security risk, depending on your circumstances.
But no, no, no, I can’t agree. There is no point in setting a limit as default, is there?
And why “profiles”? I don’t need profiles, so why do I have to use one? Let ppl set up profiles if they want 'em but don’t force those.
I sometimes have the feeling that I’m the only Linux user who questions the status quo of things. But yeah, that’s how I am. When I see things that don’t make sense for me I’m always like " Why? What was the guy who did this thinking?"
Calm down? What does that mean? And where are my Xans?
But on a more serious side: Yes, I know. BUT: Default settings should make sense for the majority of users. This is like setting VLC to stop playing any video after 10 minutes. Wanna watch the whole video? Change your settings! Hint: They’re in profiles
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not to offend anybody, but I learned that many Linux users are what I call “fanboys”. Ppl who just accept anything and don’t question much.
But I’m here and I’m open for discussion based on logic and rationality.
So,
1: What’s the point of the output in a terminal?
2: What’s the point of the default limitation of lines in context of the answer to point 1?
My answers:
1: To see if everything worked as intended and to check (error) messages if there are any.
2: I can’t see it 'cause it contradicts my answer to point 1.
I certainly agree that rational discussions are important to ensure the growth of the Linux community as a whole.
However, may I suggest that you bring this issue to the attention of KDE’s developers and give them constructive feedback with regards to Konsole’s defaults? Maybe you have done so already, in which case please ignore this.
I certainly agree with you regarding these so-called ‘fanboys,’ though they are everywhere, not just the Linux community (the tendency to form cults is probably human nature). However, just because most users of Konsole prefer not to question the fact that Konsole’s default scrollback limit is 1000 (that may very well be false; i have no idea what most users of Konsole want) does not imply that they are fanboys; it simply means that they have better things to do than focusing their attention on an issue that can be resolved with a minor tweak in Konsole’s settings. I mean, I can certainly understand your frustration if Konsole does not provide a means in its settings to change the scrollback limit… But the settings is there. C’mon, man.
Also, the fact that you prefer to scroll 10,000 lines of terminal output doesn’t mean that it is what most users prefer? I mean, why do you think pagers like less exist? Maybe most users prefer to keep their terminal screen relatively clean, so they redirect long outputs to a file to be read later? The fact that KDE’s developers gave an option to adjust the scrollback limit in their application meant that they are trying to cater to different user preferences.
It was not my intention to imply that every user who’s ok with the limit is a fanboy. I thought that’s already clear from what I wrote. If not then sorry. English isn’t my first language so it’s not always easy to express exactly what I mean.
And yeah, the setting is there, but I question the default. I don’t see any point in this and as I said, I even think it contradicts the point of the output and so far nobody gave an argument for why the limit makes sense.
See, this was a rant, this was me venting. In the end it’s not really about Konsole, it’s about the countless things I see every day that do not make sense. And it’s about all the people I see everyday that still accept it, don’t think about, don’t question things. Unfortunatly that’s something that bugs me every.single.day!
No apologies necessary. Really, though. Bring this to the attention of the developers. I mean, I understand your frustration. You run a command without expecting any errors, but the command ended up spitting out heaps of error messages and some of them ended up getting discarded because of the scrollback limit. This can be a frustrating experience, no doubt.
It’s okay to rant, but at the end of the day, it’s more important to solve the problem. Contacting the developers and request them to increase the default scrollback value should do the trick.
Not setting a limit is basically a memory leak. You need to consider other use cases of the terminal than how you use it.
Often, terminals are left open for extended periods of time and have millions or billions of lines of scrollback. Unlimited scrollback into RAM would mean unlimited RAM usage. Writing scrollback to disk creates other problems.
Having a scrollback limit by default is a sane default. If it doesn’t make sense for your personal use case, by all means change that setting for your usage.
Could make sense to open a ticket on the kde bugtracker to increase the default scrollback. With long running software the default was maybe set a decade ago.
That would be a constructive and positive outcome from this little rant.
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