this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2024
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Seeking terminal emulator with MRU tab switching shortcut (lemmy.sdf.org)
submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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I'm new to Linux; I fled from Windows in the wake of 10-11 ever-accelerating stream of bullshit.

Anyway, I have major muscle memory for MRU window and tab switching with alt-tab and ctrl-tab. Edit for clarity: I also want to be able to navigate to the Nth most recent tab by holding Ctrl and pressing Tab N times, then releasing Ctrl. I use it all the time to switch windows, switch browser tabs, and switch IDE tabs. In Windows, I could also switch Terminal tabs in MRU order, and I miss this in Linux. My distro (Mint) comes with gnome-terminal, which as far as I can tell doesn't expose MRU switching as an option.

Is there an alternative terminal that does support this, ideally with ctrl-tab? Alternatively, if you use MRU switching in other contexts but not in your terminal, what do you use instead?

UPDATE

After installing many different terminals and poring through documentation of widely varying quality, I have found at least two terminal emulators that just do what I want, out of the box: Konsole and QTerminal. I'll dive deeper into the relative merits of these two for now. If you know of another terminal that does what I described, or any crucial info about either Konsole or QTerminal, please let me know!

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I guess MRU means Most Recently Used.

Please include explanations for abbreviations you mention.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

MRU means Most Recently Used. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Kitty has been my daily driver for quite some time now, I really like it for its rich feature set and extensive configuration.

You can use its goto_tab action with 0 and negative values to get MRU behaviour. See more here: https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/actions/#action-goto_tab

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

OK, this sounds close to what I want, but I left one part unsaid: my muscle memory is such that if I want to visit the 2nd most recent tab, I can hold Ctrl, press Tab twice, then release Ctrl. It doesn't sound like I can accomplish this with Kitty key bindings, or can I?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Just tested* and it doesn't seem to work, no. I don't know if it's doable though, it may be.

  • Even though I'm a heavy user of that behaviour in Firefox (which now has to be explicitly turned on :/), I've gotten used to just use the left and right arrows (+kitty mod bind) to move around tabs.
[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Thanks, I'm open to learning alternative workflows, so thanks for adding that info.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Glad to hear! Good luck :)

[–] joshcodes 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I've read your update but try Terminator. You use alt + arrow keys to navigate multiple on screen terminals, create new ones with ctrl+e/o and its my favourite. I highly recommend giving it a try!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Thanks, I did try Terminator, but it didn't seem to have the kind of C-Tab MRU tab switching I was after. BTW, it looks like the two I did find also support multi-pane terminals with arrow key navigation. Thanks for taking the time to reply!

[–] joshcodes 1 points 3 months ago

All goof, enjoy your alternatives!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Not sure about the specific requirement but here you can find a list of "modern" terminal emulators to look at

Z

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Thanks for the link! There are lots of lists of terminals out there, but it's really hard for me to judge the quality of the lists.