What is the best alternative to iTerm2?

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score 219 · Answer 1

Alacritty

Top Pro

Blazing fast rendering with GPU-accelerated

Written in Rust with a philosophy focusing on speed and simplicity, Alacritty is one of the fastest terminal emulators out there. See More

Top Con

Cannot into ligatures

Alacritty does not support ligatures in Fira Code, Iosevka etc. See More

Top Pro

Looks good

Alacritty looks very slick on Linux, especially with GNOME or i3. See More

Top Con

Unreliable Font Rendering

Like a box of chocolate you never know what you're going to get. See More

Top Pro

Simple configuration

The configuration file is very well made and easy to use. You can fine tune your preferences to perfection in a matter of minutes. See More

Top Con

Sacrifices basic features for raw performance

The Suzuki GSXR of terminals. Or your ditzy, blonde high school cheerleader; fast and pretty but not a lot going on under the hood. Eschews a negative developmental philosophy towards including said functionality, with the official reason cited in project documentation as "Not within the realm of a terminal emulator" and ostensibly, "best left up to other tools such as terminal multiplexers" [such as screen or tmux]. Which is unfortunate when you factor in speed against terminal with the functionality built in vs their reliance on 3rd party tools: tmux on alacritty: 'find /usr' time: 3.234s, cpu: 72% tmux on konsole: find /usr' time: 1.777s, cpu: 96% See issue here. See More

Top Pro

Comprehensive font options

Alacritty can be configured to adjust line spacing (height), letter spacing (width), and individual character horizontal/vertical positions. See More

Top Pro

Has support for image previews in w3m and ranger

Top Pro

Has text ref-low when window is resized

Top Pro

Fast and simple but with true color support

It's simple and fast like xterm or urxvt but with truecolor support which is a big plus if you use a terminal based code editor. Basically Alacritty has all the features you need and nothing you don't (if you're using tmux for multiplexing). See More

Specs

Font Ligatures:No

GPU Acceleration:Yes

Configurable:Yes, via automatically reloading YAML configuration file

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219 37

score 635 · Answer 2

Homebrew

Top Pro

Quick access to a large repository of open source software

Homebrew makes it easy for people to quickly install any open source software (that is contained within the apps repositories) for Mac. See More

Top Con

May cause issues when trying to create symlinks or installing in places where SIP has changed permissions

One of the things to like about Homebrew is that it refuses to run things under sudo most of the time. This is a great policy, but it causes issues when you want to create symlinks or install in places that SIP has changed permissions on. (Alternatively, you could install Homebrew somewhere other than /usr/local, but that might break various packages that depend on having stuff in and relative to /usr/local/.) See More

Top Pro

Easy to setup and use

Once installed, you control Homebrew using the brew command. You can find packages using brew search, install them using brew install and remove them using brew uninstall. See More

Top Con

Command line tools for XCode required

Once xcode is installed you can install Homebrew, including new(er)/different versions of most of the build stuff that xcode-select installed, like a newer gcc, newer git, etc. See More

Top Pro

Open Source

Top Con

Relies on outdated system libs

Top Pro

Less maintenance than Macports

Macports seems to be able to get into a bad state where new packages are unable to be installed, or installed software was unable to be updated. This simply hasn't happened with Homebrew. In addition to not having to deal with corruption problems, Homebrew installs packages in userland. Not requiring root to install software is a big win. See More

Top Pro

Builds quickly and requires few dependencies

Homebrew as much as possible uses already existing libraries and tools to install software thus making builds quick and requiring few dependencies. See More

Top Pro

Unintrusive

Homebrew installs packages to their own directory and then symlinks their files into /usr/local. Homebrew won’t install files outside its prefix, and you can place a Homebrew installation wherever you like. See More

Top Pro

Does not require using sudo

One of the things to like about Homebrew is that it refuses to run things under sudo most of the time. This is a great policy, but it causes issues when you want to create symlinks or install in places that SIP has changed permissions on. See More

Top Pro

Homebrew tries very hard to use existing tools and libraries

Homebrew’s recipes try very hard to use the existing tools and libraries in OS/X, so they tend to build much faster and require fewer dependent libraries. See More

Specs

packages:4635

requires sudo:no

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635 73

score 237 · Answer 3

Tabby Terminal

Top Con

Some functions still fail

Top Pro

It looks just beautiful

Top Con

Graphics bugs on all platforms

On Windows 10 and Debian 11, Debian 12 the graphics starts bug after some usage. It always happens, even on different computers. See More

Top Pro

It's open source

This helps the community to move software forward and to make it even better. See More

Top Con

Slow with input lag

Sadly, Electron strikes again. The input lag is noticeable and annoying. Startup also takes like 2 seconds or more (On an i7 from 2016 with SSD). See More

Top Pro

It comes with plugins

Top Con

80MB

It's huge. The amount of resources it consumes is not justifiable. See More

Top Pro

Customizable

A lot of things can be easily configured, e.g. color theme, size, window frame behavior, tab location, cursor style, hotkeys, etc. See More

Top Con

Cannot remove the default profiles

For example, you installed Arch Linux for Windows Subsystem for Linux some time ago, but now you have deleted it and currently use Ubuntu on WSL. After that, if you decide to try this terminal emulator, you'll find Arch there without an option to remove the profiles already included in Terminus. See More

Top Pro

Is cross-platform

Even the question was "...for Windows", it's nice if you can use your tools over different platforms. See More

Top Pro

Under active development

Hyper development has basically stalled out. See More

Top Pro

Excellent interface

At start opens last session terminals. Also has terminal tabs. See More

Top Pro

Integrated GitBash, Cmd, PowerShell, and WSL

Top Pro

Integrates with git-bash with a simple toggle in the interface

Specs

License:MIT

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237 40

score 324 · Answer 4

ZOC Terminal

Top Pro

Modern look

ZOC has a modern design. See More

Top Con

Hard to configure

It does not detect the installed shells (PowerShell, CMD, etc) automatically. See More

Top Pro

An actual "Terminal Emulator"

It's an actual terminal emulator (in the sense that it emulates a terminal) and not just a local console window app. See More

Top Con

Options creep

It has so many options that it's hard to find the one you need. See More

Top Pro

Scriptable

Zoc provides complete automation of the client using its macro scripting. See More

Top Con

Not free

Zoc requires a commercial license in order to use it, implying that it's not free. See More

Top Pro

Flexibility in platform support

Originally developed for OS/2 (as Zap-O-Comm), Zoc is currently available for Windows and Macintosh. See More

Top Pro

Can view and send to all sessions at once

Offers a thumbnail view of all session in thumbnails and type commands to all sessions at the same time. See More

Top Pro

Supports serial and dial-up connections

In addition to telnet, ssh, and rlogin, ZOC supports direct serial connections, modem dialing, and named pipes. See More

Top Pro

Tabbed sessions allows for easy navigation

Tabbed sessions mean that multiple items can be contained within a single window and can be easily navigated by the user. See More

Top Pro

Hideable UI

Zoc allows for every UI component except the title bar to be hidden. All features are accessible through the context menu. See More

Top Pro

Auto-Highlight feature

Feature to search for text bits in the data stream and highlight them with color/background. See More

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324 57

score 23 · Answer 5

WezTerm

Top Pro

Supports multiple windows, tabs, splits/panes

tmux-like functionality with native UI even on Windows systems allows managing multiple terminal sessions how you like. See More

Top Con

Lua learning curve for config

The only reason it would be difficult to recommend is that it's for experienced programmers. See More

Top Pro

Looks good

Highly customizable appearance and comes with over 240 built-in color schemes. See More

Top Pro

Open Source and Free

Top Pro

Supports font ligatures and stylistic sets

Ships with JetBrains Mono, a modern programmers font, so that you can enjoy modern typographical features such as contextual ligatures and font variations/stylistic sets in your terminal environment. See More

Top Pro

GPU Accelerated

Specs

Font Ligatures:Yes, with control over shaping and stylistic sets

Configurable:Lua based live reloading configuration

GPU Acceleration:Yes

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23 7

score 16 · Answer 6

z/Scope Terminal Emulator

Top Pro

Supports tabs, making for easier navigation

z/Scope supports tabs and tab-based navigation. See More

Top Con

Not free

z/Scope is not free. See More

Top Pro

Affordable

Licenses are permanent. Price starts at $46. First year support is free. Continuing subscription, it's not mandatory to renew maintenance services. See More

Top Pro

Host Access

It supports IBM TN3270E / TN3270 emulation, IBM TN5250E, UNIX VT100-420, SSH and secure FTP integration. See More

Top Pro

Cross OS

Windows and Web-based editions. See More

16 2

score 55 · Answer 7

Sakura

Top Pro

Lightweight

Sakura has very few dependencies, it's very lightweight, and great if your computer does not have many resources. See More

Top Con

libvte/gtk

It has gnome dependencies. See More

Top Pro

True colour support

Supports full 24-bit color. See More

Top Con

Doesn't provide many configuration options

Sakura does not have any advanced configuration capabilities. See More

Top Pro

Great unicode support

Even shows combining chars correctly. See More

Top Pro

Few dependencies

Top Pro

Starts quickly even on lower-end machines

Sakura's quick start-up time becomes noticeable with lower-end machine's such as Eeepc 1015PX (Intel Atom 1.6 Ghz and 2 GB of RAM). See More

Top Pro

Tab support

Top Pro

Easy zoom

Sakura supports zooming through keyboard keys (Ctrl+'+' to zoom in and Ctrl+'-' to zoom out). See More

Top Pro

Ready for wayland

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55 6

score 57 · Answer 8

BBEdit

Top Pro

Stable development, been around for decades

BBEdit is commercial software, the paid counterpart to their free application Textwrangler. Though BBEdit comes off as pricey, this allows for stable and consistent updates from the developers. BBEdit has been around since 1992. See More

Top Con

Featureless

Top Pro

Can open very large files

Top Con

Expensive

It's US$49.99 a single user license. See More

Top Pro

Just about every feature is already built in

No searching for plug-ins that may or may not work. See More

Top Pro

Great customer support

The developer is very responsive to bug reports and feature suggestions. See More

Top Pro

Native application

Follows platform standards. See More

Top Pro

Built-in FTP/SFTP browser

BBEdit can open files directly from, and save them to, any available FTP server. It can also open and save files directly via SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol). See More

Top Pro

Great JAMStack environment

You can build the static site of your dreams without needing any external assistants. Although it does not process LESS, SASS, or SCSS files, BBEdit's includes are very powerful. See More

Specs

Platforms:Mac

License:Proprietary

Collaborative editing:No

Supported remote file editing protocols:Yes

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57 9

score 5 · Answer 9

Extraterm

Top Pro

speed

not the fastest ever, but for me its a good comprimise of features vs performance See More

Top Pro

Cross platform

Top Pro

Supports tab, splits and panes

You can set up your own layout with multiple splits and tabs. See More

Top Pro

Shell integration

The shell integration makes it possible to group in command output in "frames" which show success/failure. See More

Top Pro

Image support

You can view images and other data types like audio directly in the terminal. See More

Top Pro

Keyboard based text selection

It is possible to go into a cursor mode where you can select text just like in a text editor. It even supports multiple cursors. See More

Top Pro

Global shortcuts

You can configure global shortcuts to open the terminal. See More

Top Pro

Keyboard friendly "Command Palette"

Just like Sublime, Atom and VSCode you can easily search and find commands from the drop down Command Palette. See More

Specs

License:MIT

Keep this Behind an Admin panel:----

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5 1

score 62 · Answer 10

pkgsrc

Top Pro

pkgin is an apt-like tools for installing binaries from pkgsrc

pkgin aims to be a tool similar to apt/yum for managing pkgsrc binaries by relying on pkg_summary for installing, removing and upgrading packages and dependencies, using a remote repo. See More

Top Con

Relatively complicated setup and installation

Installing and setting pkgsrc up is a bit more complicated than in other package managers where it often consists in running a single script. See More

Top Pro

Adapted for use on over a dozen different operating systems

Has been adopted to be used on several Unix-like operating systems and Windows. It's also the default package manager of DragonflyBSD and of the (now discounted) Bluewall Linux distro. See More

Top Con

Not so broadly used on MacOS as compared with MacPorts

You do not hear about Pkgsrc as openly as you hear the words "HomeBrew" or "MacPorts". See More

Top Pro

Installs and works in the same way as MacPorts

Installs its own dependencies which means that it is very secure. Cannot install anything unless you use the "sudo" command which is in keeping with the Unix philosophy. See More

Top Con

Outdated packages

Some packages are outdated. See More

Top Pro

Both binary packages and source build possible

Fast software installation is possible by using binary packages. It's also easy to build from source which allows for different compile-time options (like different UI backends) as well as gaining access to pre-release versions of software in certain cases. See More

Top Con

Can't install some packages

Even building well known packages (except MacPorts) from source using the ports can fail. See More

Top Pro

Offering tooling for backporting fixes

Backporting fixes can be done by cherry-picking updates from a newer branch (pkgsrc is released every 3 months) and creating a package. Sometimes bugs need to be fixed for production and there is neither a fix in newer pkgsrc nor the softwares upstream. So pkgsrc has tools like pkgdiff, mkpatches, etc. that help with developing patches and building binary packages from that. A bit of documentation about that process can be found here. See More

Top Pro

Does not need Xcode command line tools or Xcode.

This means that you can install it fresh on a new installation of MacOS and have all your favorite apps installed right from the start. See More

Top Pro

Works easily with Ansible

Can be used from within Ansible to install packages on macOS. See More

Top Pro

Easy installation if you use 3rd party scripts

This one works brilliantly. See More

Specs

requires sudo:yes

packages:18560

Supports Apple Silicon:Yes

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62 11

score 308 · Answer 11

zsh

Top Con

Not fully compatible with bash

There is a small chance you may have a bash script that doesn't work in zsh, although this is very very rare and most developers will never run into any issues. See More

Top Pro

Interactive autocompletion

When you start typing a command, you can press the tab key and it will complete the command you started typing. If there are multiple potential commands, you can choose which one to run by simply pressing tab again. Case-insensitive by default, too. See More

Top Con

Requires a lot of configuration to be used fully

Zsh requires a lot of tinkering with configuration files and downloading plugins in order to be able to do tasks which other shells may be able to do out of the box. See More

Top Pro

Powerful community-driven tools via oh-my-zsh

Oh-my-zsh is a community-driven framework, which helps users with their zsh configuration and plugins. 400 plugins, 200+ themes and auto-updates to always be up to date. See More

Top Con

Defaults are unfriendly for a long-time bash user

Expect to find a configuration you like (or use the configuration utility) to set reasonable preferences. Default zsh interaction is different enough to make you stutter through what used to be familiar workflows. See More

Top Pro

Autocomplete for options

Zsh intelligently determines if you are trying to complete a file path or an option, and pressing tab after typing - will reliably bring up a list of options. See More

Top Pro

Good bash compatibility

Things you've learned using bash will largely apply to zsh. Scripts written in bash will run with little to no modification. See More

Top Pro

Safer variable behaviour

Unlike Bash, zsh does not split unquoted variables by default, making it less error-prone. See More

Top Pro

Recursive globbing

ls **/*.log for example is supported by ZSH. See More

Top Pro

Great install procedure

Zsh will take you through a procedure which is roughly 30 minutes in length before during install. Through this procedure it asks you to set different options and customize the shell the way you want it to. Most of these settings are also found in other shells, but to customize them you have to go dig configuration files while zsh allows you to do it in the beginning. See More

Top Pro

Shared histories

If you spend a lot of time in the terminal, most likely you will have several terminal windows open. Zsh has great support for command line histories. The history is unique and shared through all the different instances. See More

Top Pro

Smart escaping

Zsh can determine the context of the command you're typing in and determine if it should escape characters if you're typing in a URI. See More

Top Pro

Pipe output to a temporary file:

Some programs don't support loading from stdin, but ZSH can store outputs to a temporary file, example: unzip =(curl http://example.com/someZipFile.zip) See More

Top Pro

Faster spelling correction

Zsh' s correct (or correctall) is vastly superior to Bash's attempt at spelling correction. See More

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308 43

score 602 · Answer 12

Spacemacs

Top Pro

Combines the best parts of Vi and Emacs

Spacemacs combines the Emacs platform (with the full power of the Emacs plugin ecosystem) and the Vi keybindings (via EViL), all in the same box. See More

Top Con

Can be quite glitchy at times

Spacemacs combines many packages from many different authors that were never designed to work together. Sometimes they interact in unexpected ways, and things randomly break as one package interferes with another's features. This combined with frequent package updates and necessary customization by selection of layers and packages, can make these glitches hard to reproduce. It takes a lot of emacs know-how to fix these problems. Fortunately there is a very active community willing to help with these problems, but it might take a while. See More

Top Pro

Simple but powerful configuration architecture

At the heart of Spacemacs, the configuration layers group packages configuration into semantic units that can be toggled on and off. The architecture is simple but powerful, allowing the user to easily manage configuration dependencies between hundreds of packages. See More

Top Con

Complex learning difficulty

You must be familiar with either Vim or Emacs. In addition, you should be familiar with the unique features of Spacemacs. The Layer concept of replacing Emacs settings is still difficult and abstract compared to modern editors. See More

Top Pro

Community-driven configuration

Spacemacs is the biggest community-driven Emacs starter-kit. See More

Top Con

Functionality layers of complicated configuration

To configure Spacemacs, settings for Emacs/Evil/Spacemacs may need editing. It's not always clear which need to be changed or how to change settings globally: sometimes hooks are needed, other times Spacemacs provides options. See More

Top Pro

Above average documentation quality

Documentation is mandatory for each new configuration layer and can be accessed directly within the editor in Org format. See More

Top Con

High CPU and unresponsive at times

There are occasions when Spacemacs would suddenly consume a LOT of CPU and then other times would become completely unresponsive. This instability took place only 6 months or so ago. Restarting Spacemacs can fix it for a while but perhaps this issue is already fixed in newer versions. See More

Top Pro

Cross-platform

Emacs runs on Gnu/Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. See More

Top Con

Relative low startup time

Although configuration is heavily loaded, the starting time of Spacemacs is usually between two and five seconds. Emacs can be run as a daemon though which reduces the client's startup time to a few milliseconds. Still not as bad as other editors though, especially Electron based ones like VSCode or Atom. See More

Top Pro

Completely configured out of the box

Stuff like version control, file management, good default theme are all configured out of the box. See More

Top Pro

Mnemonic and consistent keybindings

Space-lead key bindings are organized in mnemonic namespaces. For instance, buffer actions are under SPC b, file actions are under SPC f, project actions are under SPC p, search actions are under SPC s, and so on. Keybindings are consistent across the whole distribution thanks to a set of conventions. See More

Top Pro

Can be controlled fully with the keyboard

There's no need to reach for the mouse again since Spacemacs can be fully controlled with keyboard. See More

Top Pro

Gradual learning curve

Evil package is a first class citizen and Spacemacs embraces it from day one. Evil package allows Vim users to be productive very quickly while still allowing regular Emacs users to use Spacemacs. See More

Top Pro

Remote file editing

Files can be edited in Spacemacs remotely. See More

Top Pro

Great note-taking and agenda mode built-in

Allows for great organization applications that can be saved in future-proof format, plain text, can be integrated with org, LaTeX, markdown, HTML, Literate Programming and be committed to source control. See More

Top Pro

Offers a number of practical features

Spacemacs has some great features for taking notes, tracking to-do lists, and tracking time. See More

Top Pro

LaTeX support

LaTeX allows for auto-completion, syncing, and more. See More

Top Pro

Manage many code bases easily

Top Pro

Daemon support

Has great daemon support, which can mitigate the issue of slow startup. See More

Top Pro

Can work in terminal mode

Sometimes you only have terminal access, over ssh or something. See More

Top Pro

Great CFEngine support

Syntax highlighting and org-babel extensions. See More

Top Pro

Great support from the community

The community surrounding Spacemacs is very active and there is a welcoming gitter chat for users to ask questions. See More

Top Pro

Lowers the risk of RSI by using the spacebar as leader

Spacemacs got its name from the fact that it is uses the space bar as a default leader key. The key was chosen because it is easy to press and to hopefully lower the risk of RSI. See More

Top Pro

Fast-paced development

New functionalities and fixes are added to Spacemacs every day, while release cycles are short. See More

Top Pro

Easily extended with community plugins

Top Pro

Works well with Common Lisp

Top Pro

Manage R files easily

Top Pro

Great Clojure support

Top Pro

Excellent support for Elixir programming language

Elixir layer which uses the Alchemist package is the best way to edit Elixir code out there. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, macOS, Linux, BSD

License:GPL-3.0-or-later

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602 74

score 736 · Answer 13

KiTTY

Top Pro

Includes additional features over PuTTy

Sessions filter Shortcuts for pre-defined command The session launcher Automatic logon script URL hyperlinks Running a locally saved script on a remote session Send to tray Transparency Quick start of a duplicate session SSH Handler: Internet Explorer integration pscp.exe and WinSCP integration New command-line options See More

Top Con

No centralized configuration

Each session holds its own configuration of all features. This means that if one wants to change a configuration common to all sessions (say, the terminal font), it has to be changed in each stored session separately. A better solution would be to have a default configuration and store only the changed elements for each session (both configurations would be merged, with e priority on the specific one). See More

Top Pro

Source Code Available

Source code is available so you could modify or review changes. See More

Top Con

No tabbed sessions

No built-in support for tabbed sessions. Requires an add-on. See More

Top Pro

Startup sessions

Support start-up sessions which allow you to specify the window/tab layout, working directories, and programs to run on startup. See More

Top Con

No mouse support in alternative screens

Like vim, less, etc. See More

Top Pro

Can store login credentials

Ability to store passwords/passphrases locally. See More

Top Pro

Clickable URLs

URLs are parsed and can be clicked. See More

Top Pro

Auto login script

Automatic processing of commands after conncetion was made. See More

Top Pro

True Color support

Supports True Color, so software like Vim can display a really nice pallet. See More

Top Pro

Portable version available

Top Pro

Background image

Ability to overlay the terminal background with an image. See More

Top Pro

Unicode

Uses Unicode for the best character compatibility. See More

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736 92

score 125 · Answer 14

kitty

Top Pro

Extensible Kitten framework

Supports plugins to add features one at a time for those who need them. Examples include Unicode input and side-by-side diffs. See More

Top Pro

Window tiling

Very elegant keyboard shortcuts for creating and navigating between tiled terminals within each tab with no appreciable lag. See More

Top Pro

Tabs for multiple instances

Operate several terminals from one window using the tabs feature, allowing you to make simultaneous connections to different remote hosts. See More

Top Pro

Scrollback buffer viewer

Allows for viewing the scrollback buffer in an external pager of your choice ('less' by default, with support for 'more' and 'most'), a huge benefit for turning actions taken in a live terminal session into a script for efficiency or dissemination or collaborating on workflows. See More

Top Pro

Controlled and configured from the shell prompt within the program itself

No graphical menus to clutter the screen saves system resources and time once you learn that all those options are still available from the command line within the app. See More

125 27

score 75 · Answer 15

Xshell 6

Top Pro

Connections management

Top Con

Not free

The subscription costs $89 per year. See More

Top Pro

Has tabs

Top Con

No stable portable version

Any portable version present is wrapper. It moves files from portable folder to appdata and backward, which often cause dataloss See More

Top Pro

Compose bar to send a string to multiple servers at once

Top Pro

Local shell interface to control Xshell

Top Pro

Great option for enterprises

Xshell 6 caters to enterprises with features such as multi-tab UI, dynamic port forwarding, scripting support, support for ASCII as well as non-ASCII characters, etc. See More

Top Pro

Can use any system font

Top Pro

Tunneling bar

Channel monitoring and dynamic port forwarding. See More

Top Pro

User defined key map support

Top Pro

Task automation with VB script

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75 19

score 92 · Answer 16

MacPorts

Top Pro

Provides a consistent experience across OS X versions

MacPorts eschews Apple-supplied libraries and links sources against its own making sure that the experience is the same regardless of what OS X version is used. See More

Top Con

New Packages and Updates take time

Macports isn't the first choice for developers producing new packages or binaries for macOS. Nor is it the fastest in getting updates. But in general, it usually is one of the most up to date and will be updated eventually. Some would see this as a con in comparison to Homebrew. See More

Top Pro

Easy to use

Detailed instructions on the homepage are easy to follow. Official GUI app is also available See More

Top Con

Bad at limiting dependencies

MacPorts has a habit of pulling very specific versions of dependencies for each package. It downloads different version of already existing dependencies even in cases where the existing dependency version would have worked seamlessly. See More

Top Pro

Generally very up to date

MacPorts generally gets new software soon after it's available. This way users will not have to worry if their software is up to date. See More

Top Con

Downloads unneeded libraries duplicating functionality already provided by Apple's libraries

As MacPorts eschews Apple-supplied libraries and links sources against its own a large duplication of functionality across MacPorts and Apple libraries can be found. See More

Top Pro

Nice variants system

MacPorts has a variants system that allows customizing builds with author provided options. See More

Top Con

Requires root permissions (sudo) for installation of packages

A really good security feature, but some see it as a con. See More

Top Pro

Has many more packages than its competitors

As of this writing, 20K packages. 3 to 5x more than other current package managers. See More

Top Pro

Requires SUDO to install apps

No need to worry if some rogue app will change your binaries or configuration. See More

Top Pro

Download libraries instead of relying on Apple's caprices

Considering just how often Apple breaks things, any reduplication of of Apple-supplied libraries with the canonical sources is an asset. See More

Top Pro

Fast

Written in Tcl & C, it's generally significantly faster than the competition. Tcl is also quite readable and comparable to Ruby, so it's also friendly to newcomers. See More

Top Pro

Supports older Mac operating systems

Homebrew dropped support for old Macs. MacPorts still supports them. See More

Top Pro

MacPorts is a native application: C + TCL

No need to install Ruby, or any other programming language. See More

Top Pro

More packages than competition

Top Pro

Apple Silicon Ready

With Apple moving over to its own silicon, macports has been ready for the move to ARM since 2.6.4 See More

Top Pro

Initially started and developed by Apple employees and supported by Apple itself

Reading the story behind MacPorts, it is the only one that was developed by Apple by an Apple employee. In fact it is the same person that was responsible for creating the FreeBSD port system. See More

Top Pro

Great support for older systems

Top Pro

Most of the available packages work

For example, trying to install Finch using Pkgsrc doesn't work, while installing it using MacPorts works perfectly. Finch isn't even on Homebrew's radar. See More

Specs

requires sudo:yes

Supports Apple Silicon:Yes

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92 25

score 2402 · Answer 17

Vim

Top Pro

Lightweight and fast

When compared to modern graphical editors like Atom and Brackets (which have underlying HTML5 engines, browsers, Node, etc.), Vim uses a sliver of the system's memory and it loads instantly, all the while delivering the same features. Vim is also faster than Emacs. See More

Top Con

High effort to customize

A lot of time and effort is put in to make it specific to your needs. See More

Top Pro

Free and open-source software

Vim is open-source, GPL-compatible charityware. See More

Top Con

Difficult learning curve

You'll spend a lot of time learning all the commands and modes supported in Vim. You'll then spend more time tuning settings to your needs. Although once it's tuned to your needs, you can take your .vimrc to any machine you need and have the same experience across all your computers. See More

Top Pro

Works in terminal over SSH

Unlike other editors such as Sublime Text, Vim is a command line editor and hence can be used in remote development environments like Chromebooks via SSH. See More

Top Con

Difficult to copy, paste, and delete

Top Pro

Extremely portable

Vi/vim exists on almost all Unix-like platforms. It's the de-facto Unix editor and is easily installed on Windows. All you need to make it work is a text-based connection, so it works well for remote machines with slow connections, or when you're too lazy to set up a VNC/Remote Desktop connection. See More

Top Con

Poor support for external tooling

Many plugins depend on optional Python and Lua features, which may or may not be included in whatever binaries are available for your system. And without platform-specific hacks, it is difficult for plugins to operate in the background or use external tooling. See More

Top Pro

Keyboard-based, mouse-free interface, and trackpad support

There's no need to reach for the mouse or the Ctrl/Alt buttons again. Everything is a mere key press or two away with almost 200 functions specifically for text editing. Vim does support the mouse, but it's designed so you don't have to use it for greater efficiency. Versions of Vim, like gVim or MacVim, still allow you to use the mouse and familiar platform shortcuts. That can help ease the learning curve and you'll probably find you won't want to (or need to) use the mouse after a while. See More

Top Con

Poor feature discoverability

Though basic features like syntax checking, autocompletion, and file management are all available out of the box or with minimal configuration, this is not obvious to new users, who might get intimidated or assume they need to install complex plugins just so they can have this functionality. Other features new users might expect to find embedded in Vim, such as debugging, instead follow a UNIX-style model where they are called as external programs, the output of which might then be parsed by Vim so it can display results. Users not familiar with this paradigm will likely fault Vim for lacking those features as well. See More

Top Pro

Great productivity

Vim's keyset is mainly restricted to the alphanumeric keys and the escape key. This is an enduring relic of its teletype heritage, but has the effect of making my ost of Vim's functionality accessible without frequent awkward finger reaches. See More

Top Con

No smooth scrolling

Even with the GUI version, the lines jiggle line-by-line. If you are used to smooth scrolling, this is very annoying, especially when working with larger files. See More

Top Pro

Macros increase productivity

Many text editors have programmable macros, but since Vim is keyboard-based, your programmed macros are usually far more predictable and easier to understand. See More

Top Con

Doesn't play nice with the system cut/paste mechanisms

This can be worked around somewhat if you disable mouse for insert mode. You can then right-click your terminal and use paste like you would anywhere else in a terminal. But it still doesn't feel right when the rest of your system uses Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V, and you have a system clipboard manager, and so forth. See More

Top Pro

Excellent performance

As it loads the whole file into RAM, replacing all string occurrences in 100 MB+ files is quick and easy. Every other editor has sort of died during that. It is extremely fast even for cold start. Vim is light-weight and very compact. In terminal, it only uses a small amount of memory and anytime you invoke Vim, it's extremely fast. It's immediate, so much so you can't even notice any time lag. See More

Top Con

Outdated UI

Top Pro

Tons of plugins/add-ons

This makes Vim the definitive resource for every environment (Ruby/Rails, Python, C, etc.), or simply just provides more information in your view. See More

Top Con

Requires Brain Mode Switching

When editing in vim, you have you use the vim keys; when editing in every other window on your PC, or in Word or Excel or other application, you need to use the standard system key combinations. Learning the vim combinations can actually make you SLOWER at everything else. See More

Top Pro

Everything is mnemonic

No need to memorize different key combinations for things like deleting the text inside of a block or deleting the text inside of a pair of quotes. It's just a series of actions, or nouns and verbs, or however you prefer to think about it. If you want to delete, you select "d"; if you want it to happen inside something, you select "i"; and if you want the surrounding double-quotes, just select ". But if you were changing the text, or copying it, or anything else, you'd still use the same "i" and ". This makes it very easy to remember a large number of different extremely useful commands, without the effort it takes to remember all of the Emacs "magic incantations", for example. See More

Top Con

Slow when opening files with very long lines

A lot of very long lines can make Vim take up to a minute to open files, where a few other editors take only seconds to load the same file. See More

Top Pro

Vimtutor

Vimtutor is an excellent interactive tutorial for people with no prior experience of Vim. It takes about 30 minutes to complete. See More

Top Con

Consume brain energy for editing that should be used for logic

Text editing in vim is awesome, but it requires thinking about combination of commands. In other editors, you don't have to think about how to delete this part of code. You just think about how to implement a feature, what is a good design for this code. Even after you get used to using vim, it still requires your brain for editing. See More

Top Pro

Amazing extensibility

Vimscript provides a rich scripting functionality to build upon the core of Vim. When combined with things like Tim Pope's Pathogen plugin management system, it becomes easy to add support for syntax, debugging, build systems, git, and more. See More

Top Con

Foreign keyboards have a hard time on Vim out of the box

A lot of frequently-used keybinds are way harder to access on foreign keyboards because they use different layouts. For example, Germans use the QWERTZ layout, while French use the AZERTY. See More

Top Pro

Usable from a Terminal or with a GUI (GVim, MacVim)

If you happen to be logged into SSH, you can use Vim in a terminal. It can also run with a GUI too. See More

Top Con

Unintuitive mode switching

Top Pro

Has been supported for a long time

And will be supported for many years to come. See More

Top Con

Extensibility isn't that great

While it has gotten better and some projects are slowly starting to build proper extension support, it still can't and by design never will achieve the extensibility of another editor like emacs. See More

Top Pro

Once learned, it's very hard to forget

Vim's somewhat steep learning curve is more than made up for once you've mastered a few basic concepts and learned the tricks that allow you to program faster with fewer cut/paste mistakes. See More

Top Con

Works poorly out of the box with right-to-left

Top Pro

Can never outgrow it

The fact that very few, if any, people claim to be a "Vim Master" is a testament to the breadth and depth of Vim. There is always something new to learn - a new, perhaps more efficient, way to use it. This prevents Vim from ever feeling stale. It's always fresh. See More

Top Pro

Flexible feature-set

Vim allows users to include many features found in IDEs and competing editors, but does not force them all on the user. This not only helps keep it lighter in weight than a lot of other options, but it also helps ensure that some unused features will not get in the way. See More

Top Pro

Has multiple distinct editing modes

Interaction with Vim is centered around several "modes", where purpose and keybindings differ in each. Insert mode is for entering text. This mode most resembles traditional text entry in most editors. Normal mode (the default) is entered by hitting ESC and converts all keybindings to center around movement within the file, search, pane selection, etc. Command mode is entered by hitting ":" in Normal mode and allows you to execute Vim commands and scripts similar in fashion to a shell. Visual mode is for selecting lines, blocks, and characters of code. Those are the major modes, and several more exist depending on what one defines as a "mode" in Vim. See More

Top Pro

By default in Linux

All Linux distributions out there will have Vim built into them, which is highly convenient! See More

Top Pro

Vim encourages discipline

If you use Vim long enough, it will rewire your brain to be more efficient. See More

Top Pro

Useful undo features

Vim does not only offer unlimited undo levels, later releases support an undo tree. It eventually gives the editor VCS-like features. You can undo the current file to any point in the past, even if a change was already undone again. Another neat feature is persistent undo, which enables to undo changes after the file was closed and reopened again. See More

Top Pro

Donations and support to Vim.org helps children in Uganda through ICCF Holland

Top Pro

Built-in package management

Starting with Vim 8, a package manager has been built into Vim. The package manager helps keep track of installed plugins, their versions and also only loads the needed plugins on startup depending on the file type. See More

Top Pro

If you can use Vim you can also use vi

Top Pro

Works on Android

Top Pro

Productivity enhancing modal paradigm

As with all vi-like editors, Vim provides a modal paradigm for text editing and processing that provides a rich syntax and semantic model for composing succinct, powerful commands. While this requires some initial investment in learning how it works in order to take full advantage of its capabilities, it rewards the user well in the long run. This modal interface paradigm also lends itself surprisingly well to many other types of applications that can be controlled by vi-like keybindings, such as browsers, image viewers, media players, network clients (for email and other communication media), and window managers. Even shells (including zsh, tcsh, mksh, and bash, among others) come with vi-like keybinding features that can greatly enhance user comfort and efficiency when the user is familiar with the vi modal editing paradigm. See More

Top Pro

Asynchronous I/O support

Since Vim 8, Vim can exchange characters with background processes asynchronously. This avoids the problem of the text editor getting stuck when a plugin that had to communicate with a server was running. Now plugins can send and receive data from external scripts without forcing Vim to freeze. See More

Top Pro

Can set up keymapping

Top Pro

Multiple clipboards

It is called "registers". See More

Top Pro

Status Booster

Using vim not just increase your productivity, but helps you flex. See More

Specs

Platforms:Linux, macOS, Windows, Cygwin

License:Vim License

Price:0

Extension language:Vim

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2402 445

score 1514 · Answer 18

Sublime Text

Top Pro

Lightweight

Sublime Text is very lightweight by default. Customization occurs on the fly thanks to Package Control. See More

Top Con

Paid

Although paying for something good is far from a Con, having the competition this editor has and still have to pay for it is definitely a Con. See More

Top Pro

Comfortable to work with

Sublime Text has a minimap on the side that provides a top-down view of the file and keyboard shortcuts for most actions. It also supports a large number of languages and general text editing features out of the box. See More

Top Con

Proprietary

Sublime Text protects and copyrights its code and is thus not the freedom-ware some would like it to be. See More

Top Pro

Multi-line select and editing

Multiple cursors and column selection allows for versatile ways of editing. ctrl + d will select the current word and each time the command is repeated, it adds the next occurrence of the word to the selection. ctrl + click or middle-mouse click will place another cursor in the place that's clicked. Cursors can then be controlled together. This also permits selecting vertically. ctrl + shift + l will place a cursor on every highlighted line. See More

Top Con

Interruption while work

"Purchasing" messages box interrupts while saving file. See More

Top Pro

Functionality can be easily extended

Sublime Text uses TextMate's syntax declaration files to support new languages, it has all its menus and keybindings generated from JSON files, and it can be scripted to add new features using Python. If Sublime Text doesn't support a desired language or feature, it's usually not long before someone implements it themselves - examples include the plugin package manager and the 'open in browser' command. See More

Top Con

No printing of files

Sublime Texts offers no way of printing the files it edits. See More

Top Pro

Beginner-friendly

When you start using Sublime Text, it doesn't drown you in keyboard shortcuts or non-intuitive use-concepts. However, high-level functionality can still be easily accessed when the need for it arises. See More

Top Con

Not a full IDE

It does not necessarily function on a project level. See More

Top Pro

Consistent cross-platform

Sublime Text looks consistently the same across Windows, OS X, and Linux. See More

Top Con

Annoying whitespace management

All too often it does the wrong thing with indentation on otherwise blank lines. See More

Top Pro

Fully customizable

Sublime Text allows for all sorts of customization to help users change almost everything in the editor: Key Bindings, Menus, Snippets, Macros, Completions, and many more. Essentially, just about everything in Sublime Text is customizable with simple JSON files. This system gives the user flexibility as settings can be specified on a per-file type and per-project basis. See More

Top Con

Loading big files on Windows is slow

Here's a rough comparison: a 70 MB file takes about 2 seconds to load in Notepad++, whereas the same file in ST3 takes over 10 seconds to load. See More

Top Pro

Very fast

Sublime is quick to start and never slows down. The UI is always responsive and you know what is happening in the background. See More

Top Con

No toolbar

Sublime Text is more focused on keyboard users, meaning it doesn't come with a tool bar. Even plugins can't toggle bookmarks using the mouse. See More

Top Pro

Has tons of plugins available

Top Con

Slow development

While development has yet to stop on Sublime Text, it is significantly slower than its competitors Atom, VSCode, and others. See More

Top Pro

Installable package manager

The package manager is a plugin and can be swapped with something else custom. See More

Top Con

Inadequate language support

Sublime Text offers poor support for Far-East languages in Linux. See More

Top Pro

IDE features without the cruft

Sublime Text, while being lighter-weight than an IDE, still supports many IDE features. Text from the current file is used to provide autocomplete. Project Support (folder browsing, scoped history, build-system declarations). Refactoring support is emulated through multi-select, project-wide find and replace, and regular expression search. Syntax-aware selection and GoTo for quickly jumping to locations in the project. Snippets and Macros. A Python console for everything else. See More

Top Con

No RTL Support

Although it is a "text" editor, Sublime Text does not support rendering text written in Arabic or other right to left languages. The developers seems unwilling to fix this issue any time soon. See More

Top Pro

Offers Command Palette

Command Palette allows for fuzzy searching all available settings, snippets, etc. See More

Top Con

Often crashes due to poor quality plugins

Some plugins are quite buggy, meaning that installing many can become quite a problem regarding stability. See More

Top Pro

Easy to get started

All you need to do when starting up is to install a package manager and modify user configuration. See More

Top Pro

Regex commands

Regex commands help describe a certain amount of text. See More

Top Pro

Customizable keymapping

From menus to commands, assign key maps to almost anything. See More

Top Pro

Portable settings

Settings are modular and can be shared. See More

Top Pro

Distraction free editing mode

Distraction free editing takes over your screen and removes every UI element so you can focus on code. See More

Top Pro

Dynamic Build System

Choose from many build systems or craft your own. See More

Top Pro

Freemium

A Sublime license can be bought but it can still be used for free. However, a pop-up appears when you save multiple times. See More

Top Pro

Permits instant file switching

Open Goto Anything by pressing Ctrl or Command + P and by using fuzzy search you can look for a file in your project. The file will load even without pressing enter, so you can make sure you've found the correct file without committing. See More

Top Pro

Multiple languages are supported

Top Pro

Haxe and OpenFL integration via plugin

Both of these programming interfaces are cross-platform, open source, and easy to use. See More

Top Pro

Direct server upload

Provides command line shortcut for server upload. See More

Top Pro

Projects support multiple folders and git repos

Top Pro

Allows for Vim-style editing

Vintage mode is Vim-style editing that's already built into the text editor. See More

Top Pro

Support for TextMate themes and window decoration themes

Sublime Text compatibility with Textmate bundles is good, but excludes commands, which are incompatible. In general, Sublime Text syntax definitions are compatible with Textmate language files (.tmLanguage extension). See More

Top Pro

Highly Theme-able

Create your own theme with online editor. See More

Top Pro

Functionalities

With lot of functionalities, where other editor even not think to provide. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, macOS, Linux

License:Proprietary

Multi Language Support:Yes

Auto Complete:Yes

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1514 325

score 297 · Answer 19

PuTTY

Top Pro

Free

Top Con

Only one session per window

Cannot open a second session in the same window (you need multiple windows). See More

Top Pro

De facto standard client for SSH, Telnet and Rlogin on Windows

PuTTY is one of the oldest and most popular clients. It has earned the trust of a great number of users over a long period by being reliable, offering useful features and helpful support. It got into the 15 Essential Open Source Tools for Windows Admins list by InfoWorld. See More

Top Con

Can not save passwords

Anyway, you can use "PuTTYgen" to generate a key pair, then use "Pageant" to do a password-less SSH remote login. See More

Top Pro

Can be used on any Windows computer, even without admin rights

Top Con

Lacks features

It is JUST an SSH client. There are many other options with built in X-servers, Multitabbing, etc. See More

Top Pro

Source code available

Full source available. Compile and modify it yourself. See More

Top Con

Ugly design, too simple

Looks very dated. Does the basic functions very well, but not much more. See More

Top Pro

Lightweight and portable

Doesn't require much resources (memory and hard-disk). Can even be run on a system by just downloading without install. See More

Top Con

No global settings

If you want to change a setting for all your connections, you'd have to do it individually. See More

Top Con

Organizing sessions

Does not have features for organizing session connections (like folders). If you have 5-10 connections that's fine. But if there are 30-50 connections - that becomes a nightmare. See More

Top Con

Tedious logging/tracing

Its tedious to set up logging and tracing (e.g. for serial connections). See More

Top Con

No login scripting

Specs

Platforms:Windows, GNU/Linux

License:MIT

Initial Release:1999-01-22

Latest Release:2021-07-17

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297 86

score 89 · Answer 20

hyper

Top Con

Made with Electron

It uses a considerable amount of resources, compared to other offerings. See More

Top Pro

Cross-platform due to electron browser-based foundation

Although not Windows-friendly. But nobody uses Windows terminal anyway. See More

Top Con

Not as cross platform as advertised

Most features only work on Mac OS. See More

Top Pro

Built on electron, supports split panels and plugins

Top Con

Incorrect rendering

Terminal window has visual artifacts. See More

Top Con

No configuration UI; all options must be set via JSON

Top Con

Still maturing as of December 2016

Folks noticed some issues in the 1.0 release cited here. See More

Top Con

Difficult to find information about it, because of the confusion with hyperterminal

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89 40