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Add to SafariWhen comparing Xfce4 terminal vs cool-retro-term, the Slant community recommends Xfce4 terminal for most people. In the question“What are the best terminal emulators for UNIX-like systems?” Xfce4 terminal is ranked 4th while cool-retro-term is ranked 18th. The most important reason people chose Xfce4 terminal is:
Like other applications included in the Xfce package, this terminal emulator is very lightweight and doesn't require many resources to run. This makes it perfect for systems that have low specs.
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Good for systems with low specs
Like other applications included in the Xfce package, this terminal emulator is very lightweight and doesn't require many resources to run. This makes it perfect for systems that have low specs.
Pro True transparency
You can set the transparency of the Xfce4 terminal on any amount you want, out of the box.
Pro Tabs support
Xfce4 fully supports tabs and tab-based navigation.
Pro Almost everything is customizable
You can configure size, color, background, etc.
Pro Composition effects
Xfce4 terminal takes advantage of xfce composition effects.
Pro Fast rendering
Pro Can be switched to a drop-down terminal
You can configure the Xfce-terminal to act as a dropdown terminal if you want, which makes for greater ease of use.
Pro Mimics the look and feel of the old cathode tube screens
Cool-retro-term mimics the look of old cathode screens. This is just aesthetic, but great for people who want a more retro feel.
Pro Good rendering
If you disable every special effect and the framing, the rendering is actually quite comfortable and readable making a good terminal option if you have CPU cycles to spare.
Pro Good fun
For simple tasks this is wonderful - anyone seeing it will love it, takes me back to using the Commodore Pet in college in the early 80's.
Pro Available in multiple repositories
This terminal is available for download from repositories in all the most popular distros, making it easily available.
Cons
Con Cannot set text color for character under cursor to background color
Suppose you have a dark background with a light cursor and light foreground color: the light cursor will cover up whatever character it is on, so that you cannot read it. There is no option to set the foreground color for the character under the cursor to what is normally the background color. Such an option would allow you to read the character under the cursor.
Con Execution in xfce4-terminal - e mode is not always functional
Con Resizing text resizes window
Con No profiles
There's no profiles or profile-based customization in Xfce-terminal.
Con Can't scroll on spamming text
When text generates too fast, you can't scroll it, so you just can't read anything in such moments.
Con Does not support sixel images
Con Not very practical by today's standards
While it certainly has an aesthetic feel, cool-retro-term is nothing more than a cool trick if you want to play around. It's not very useful in this day and age.
Con Extremely heavy and impactful on resources
A massive amount of resources are used as graphical processing in cool-retro-term. They are ridiculously heavy for the terminal's intended use.
Con Large dependency on kde
It looks like many of the effects present here are provided by more or less stock kde effect libraries. For Gnome-based systems, installing this will pull in a large handful of kde libs.
