Xfce Forum

Highway Child

Member

Registered: 2007-03-13

Posts: 4

xfce4 terminal improvement

Hello,

Terminal has this smart feature that only one process is running, regardless of how many terminals one opens.
This causes startup time to be reduced drastically, naturally.

But when I close the last terminal, xfce4-terminal exits and I have to wait multiple seconds again when I open a fresh Terminal when the system is under heavy load.

Can you set xfce4-terminal to run in the background constantly?
Would be a real usability improvement.

Nick

Dev

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Registered: 2005-02-17

Posts: 1,144

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Re: xfce4 terminal improvement

Nope you can't. Terminal doesn't has a daemon mode and I don't think this is important for an application as Terminal since it's of no use when all the windows are closed, unlike for example Thunar that keeps it's instance running to monitor the hal events.

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Highway Child

Member

Registered: 2007-03-13

Posts: 4

Re: xfce4 terminal improvement

Nope you can't. Terminal doesn't has a daemon mode and I don't think this is important for an application as Terminal since it's of no use when all the windows are closed, unlike for example Thunar that keeps it's instance running to monitor the hal events.

Well, I tried to explain why I think it is important: To reduce startup time.

<<
I have a 2,2GHz system and am constantly amazed by the bloat that has taken over a big part of linux software nowadays.
My system is too slow to comfortably run KDE or Gnome - those two environments expect me to wait seconds for simple things like opening a folder or opening an editor window.
This in itself is quite unbelievable if you think about it - a high performance computer like mine being hardly adequate to comfortably perform basic computing tasks when using up-to-date software.
>>

And this is the reason I use xfce.
Now Terminal is so bloated it too takes long to start...but the workaround is already built-in, only it is not effective for every usage pattern.

BTW: rxvt already has this feature :-)

I will file this as an enhancement bug report.

Nick

Dev

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Registered: 2005-02-17

Posts: 1,144

Website

Re: xfce4 terminal improvement

Yes I read that, but it's better to restart an application from time to time (esp. with crapy widgets like VTE ). And I don't think it will take longer then 1 sec. to start on a 2.2Ghz system...

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Highway Child

Member

Registered: 2007-03-13

Posts: 4

Re: xfce4 terminal improvement

One Second would be already too long.

When Terminal is not running:
$ time Terminal -e 'exit'

real    0m1.383s
user    0m1.000s
sys     0m0.108s

This seems like a small eternity when waiting for it to open.
It sucks having to interrupt your workflow just for being able to type a simple command or three.
CLI availability at any time is essential to me :-)

When Terminal is running:
$ time Terminal -e 'exit'

real    0m0.337s
user    0m0.020s
sys     0m0.000s

That rocks!

Yes I read that, but it's better to restart an application from time to time (esp. with crapy widgets like VTE cheesy).

So you say Terminal sucks at its core?

Nick

Dev

From: ~

Registered: 2005-02-17

Posts: 1,144

Website

Re: xfce4 terminal improvement

Well if you only want to spawn a quick command you can also try verve or Alt+F2. Anyways, you can always file a feature request on the Xfce bugzilla if you think it's important to have a daemon mode for terminal.

You can also comment those in the terminal code:

[code=terminal-app.c]if (G_UNLIKELY (app->windows == NULL))
    gtk_main_quit ();[/code]

I think that will give the same result.

And I don't say the base of terminal sucks, it's just that VTE is not my favorite widget and it never will be...

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