The Simple Terminal: st from Suckless, and how I extend it

github.com/lukesmithxyz/st
WEBSITE: lukesmith.xyz 🌐❓🔎
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[@DJ_Cthulhu]

Token cough in case the boss is watching 🤧

[@Berevezje]

"Token cough" ha!

[@kickbuttowsk2i]

Been using your st build for four months, works flawlessly thank you luke

[@ThaRSGeek]

looks coomplicated why not use windows instead

[@____-gy5mq]

troll comment

[@zionlee1004]

@@user-no3tu9kh3p lmao

[@davismar98]

Or use an iMac, but I'm pretty sure he can't afford one 👌 /s

[@jamesm5192]

Ya I hear Windows has Linux now ;)

[@zionlee1004]

@@jamesm5192 wsl sucks balls though

[@grenin1010]

I've been using your st build for close to a year, after switching away from urxvt for truecolor support. But today I decided to build it myself. So glad I did, now I can use alt+j/k/l to leave modes and move in vim in one keyboard press again!

[@grenin1010]

and now I have a freshly updated version with my patches rebased onto master.

[@UnderArea51]

I've stubbed upon your channel! Awesome! As a new learner of programming, I've really enjoyed booting straight into a terminal, installing programs, and learning Python in Vim editor. I started out with Vim. The terminal feels like driving a car with stick shift. I feel connect - feel closer to the computer, removing all the visual distracting of the goo GUI. LOVE YOUR CHANNEL!!!

[@theeternalstudent3118]

How's it going ?

[@larry_the]

1 year later be honest how far did you come

[@zastanawiacz]

@@larry_the He never come again :) After 2 years nothing happend XD

[@hfdcjiirjmcfi]

He's stuck in a loop

[@SisypheanRoller]

​@@theeternalstudent3118 he's living in the assembler now

[@RonnyOlufsen]

Your content is solid gold!

[@fuseteam]

"no terminal will have ... ctrl v for pasting" elementaryos: hold my tux

[@kot3405]

wtfff thats gay

[@fuseteam]

@@kot3405 what is? :p

[@AdmiralMaur]

Bro do you even sigint?

[@fuseteam]

@@AdmiralMaur who needs sigint :V but no appearent ctrl+v appears to be only one that works on elementaryos terminal cause reasons :P i don't use elementary os fwiw

[@magnusphilosophus506]

There is ctrl shift v

[@JDStone20]

I really like this new video series! Awesome!

[@KupriyanovKirill]

Luke: I want my /comfy/ vim bindings everywhere Luke a few moments later: You can't use Ctrl+C or Ctrl+V in terminal, so I use Alt+C and Alt+V Me: ._______.

[@Fetusgi]

I also wondered why not just Alt+y and Alt+p.

[@fuseteam]

it should've been alt+y and alt+p :V

[@omarortega3238]

I consider Ctrl + C / Ctrl + V the must annoying.

[@carlod1605]

Alt+c is used like a diacritical mark in my layout and that's why I cannot use Luke's build, but overall Luke has done good job with st

[@fuseteam]

@Rahmi Acar alt+y works the same as esc+y ;3 heck esc+any normal key works exactly like esc followed by any normal key :p that's why i don't like alt bindings anymore lol

[@JDStone20]

Along with st, I also use guake. I did a time tree command to test the speed, and both came out the same speed, faster that the i3 terminal and xterm

[@Alkaris]

Most terminals by default have you press Ctrl+Shift+C to Copy and Ctrl+Shift+V to Paste things in Terminal.

[@henninb]

I love this video!!

[@plato4ek]

@Luke Hi! Don't these st bindings conflict with other tools you use in your terminal? Like vi, less, etc.

[@awabqureshi814]

absolute fucking perfect time! I just downloaded it from github 3 hours ago

[@iodreamify]

The copy output of last command is very useful. Would it be possible to achieve something like this but instead of copying, just have it scroll the terminal to the beginning of the output when it occurred? Or even just the last command, without the selection. Is there any terminal that provides this functionality?

[@LucyPero]

It works great but the display bugs out when you scroll back down and you reach the end.. Like it removes the newlines before your prompt

[@ultrahalf]

Imagine Luke doing live streams

[@kot3405]

didnt he do podcasts?

[@jjtt]

There was a week in which he did a bunch of livestreams with other various channels

[@slendi9623]

Guess waht

[@tonynguyen725]

are you going between 2 computers to record? I notice how the colors always change :)

[@timcooper2568]

it looked great in mint, but has some kind of funky scrunched together font, on manjaro(xfce) how to force it to use a more sane font?

[@JDStone20]

I did use the scrollback patch, but it is iffy to get it to work on different systems of mine, so I just use tmux. I also change to font to be compatible with lsd and powerline.

[@f23anone82]

How to comment / uncomment entire section in VIM without visually selecting it, while in the middle of the section, like at 8:14?

[@clockworkpc]

@@baovu3488 Thanks m8 that's a huge help

[@vicmac3513]

@8:14 what kind of David Copperfield trick you committed to uncomment those lines in current paragraph?

[@oldthocker47]

I aspire to be these level of nerdy effective.

[@loverboykimi]

Is there a way to set scroll back cache to unlimited ?

[@tasoulman]

I know I mentioned this before but you should put the key bindings of your suckless builds in the wiki of each repo.

[@colinmsmall]

My only issue with st is performance. When I use something like cava for example, it seems to struggle with it or I'll get strange behavior. But other terminals like xterm, kitty, etc. seem fine. I tried adjusting settings for performance but it never really worked well. After using kitty and alacritty for a while I strangely enough found myself going to xterm. I never even considered xterm prior.. it was always st, kitty, alacritty, termite urxvt... then I was like.. what about xterm? I gave it a shot and I've been using it for months now with no issues.

[@ultrat00n]

Try urxvt

[@christopherappleby7453]

I really like xterm and still have it if I need something trustworthy. (I really have xfe (x file explorer) that comes with xterm. Urxvt is also really good

[@_smhmd]

add space to the edges of your status bar to stay consistent with the tags section.

[@berndeckenfels]

The alt+o is neat, does it parse the prompt?

[@MahbubAlam231]

How do I make st my default terminal in Linuxmint. After installation it's not available in the list of prefered applications in linux mint. I tried running `sudo update-alternatives --config x-terminal-emulator`, st isn't available there as well. This could be a dumb question.

[@cyberdr3am656]

I love your build but when i use it i have got a lot of lag when scrolling so i switch to urxvt but your st is very cool

[@lcarusfp]

Nice Vid! How did you get Dmenu to display at the top of st and not at the top of your screen?

[@gaurangshukla8235]

dmenu -w windowid

[@lcarusfp]

@@gaurangshukla8235 thanks!

[@andrewhuang6232]

Hi,Luke, could you show me how to define the shortcut for changing the size of terminal input? thanks

[@boonkerz]

in dmenu and in command navigation you are using the cursor keys?

[@ovicwankenobi]

im starting using ST i clone your repo, how you make you luke@art set in that color i mine does not look like that. Do i need to do something else ? Thank you for your video

[@blazefirer]

Is there anyway to turn off the terminal colors? Its overriding my oh my zsh theme and I would like to get it back

[@mesbahuddin5328]

I'm struggling to set st as my default terminal instead of konsol in manjaro kde plasma. Tried default application option; didn't work. Any suggestion would be appreciated.

[@ajwadjaved9909]

What command are you using to delete all of those /* */ in a block together?

[@georgetom7961]

vim plugin github.com/tpope/vim-commentary#commentaryvim . gcap to uncomment a paragraph

[@AhmedKhaled-sj1zx]

Gonna be great if u used plumber. I mean Alt+o (for open urls) could be generalized via Alt+y (copy it) and then some binding for plumb whatever u copied for plumber and run it.

[@OpletalRobin]

Is there a way to copy the output of a command during a tmux/ssh session?

[@eegoal]

11:54 I installed that font and set the configuration in dwm but I still can't put emojis in the statusbar.

[@eegoal]

@@lordrusk6118 Dude I can't thank you enough! It worked perfectly. Thank you very much!!

[@vasilijrozanov7873]

thanks Luke, you are the best. can you make a video about config dwm in gentoo/calculate linux? i twice stuck there unpleasant, if you have a time. thanks! have a good a long life! greetings from Slovakia.

[@Prayagmatic]

You said in you channel reboot video that your system is pretty stable now. So can you please do a video on backing up your Arch system and basically how to safeguard yourself from your system breaking due to updates and stuff?

[@nevoyu]

A filesystem that supports snapshotting. So lvm, btrfs. A separate home volume or partition.

[@GonzaloOviedoLambert]

You need a key to establish to increase the font to be visible in just two key

[@claudiofurrer5953]

Is there a way to open a new st session based on the current one? The idea es to clone/mirror same path, etc on a new st. I've tried with a st-copyout alike script, but I couldn't. Great work Luke.

[@claudiofurrer5953]

Dismiss it. Solved with st-newterm patch.

[@wxIyz]

I like this terminal but I installed different version, what version do you recomend to install?

[@ravipratapmishra7013]

I am new to arch luke, the command shown at start to install 'st' is not founding target and I am using 'paru'.

[@MatMar0]

Anybody knows what is that Brave extension that sits next to Stylus?

[@DanielTateNZ]

@Luke Smith Do you use tmux?

[@FelixTang32]

@LukeSmith Can you please share your st enhancements that you should in the video ?

[@karthickram3804]

i would like to ask you one thing regarding the arch linux mr Luke..... after installing the arch linux what are the things are installed or modified to look like your system .... because your arch linux customization is looking really nice and very awesome .... could you please tell me what did you do after installing the arch linux......

[@TheTtmx]

What keybind are you using for commenting/uncommenting stuff in .Xresources?

[@pzrc9457]

Likely a macro

[@Uch33z3]

Or nerdcommenter github.com/preservim/nerdcommenter

[@MisterBrausepulver]

Judging by his nvimrc, this should come from tpopes plugin vim-commentary

[@andrewyu6996]

How do you disable transparency on your st build?

[@victorprokop2240]

Will you do more LaTeX/Rmarkdown/*roff stuff?

[@musicamonarchy3062]

need more of groff

[@CocolinoFan]

I've created the Xresorces text file inside .config and set the transparency there, plus I've changed the transparency in st/config.h but it does not work, my terminal is fully opaque. Any ideas anyone?

[@christopherappleby7453]

Are you running xcompmgr or picom? You need one of those running for those settings to take effect - at least for me

[@CocolinoFan]

@@christopherappleby7453 Thank you kind stranger. Yep for terminal transparency to work I had to install a program.

[@slytherinsalazar4668]

How can I do my st scroll back?

[@greendog105]

Its not clear to me where and how to change the font. Ligatures are important to me.

[@dwillingham]

I've been messing with this stuff for years but still feel dumb... I installed it with yay on Artix. When I run "st" I get an error "could not allocate color 'BACKGROUND'"

[@cstrovn]

I don't know why but st doesn't quite respond to my .Xresources (yes, I do execute xrdb, even with -merge), but when I used urxvt it worked normally... Anyone?

[@LeadasTwoKings]

When running the Alt + o script, how do you get the dmenu interface only on the terminal?

[@samratshrestha9849]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/a3ack4Jrj7qFmdU

[@JoaquinAlcerro]

So, I just ask this question on your previous ST video: Cool... just trying st terminal now. One question: does st terminal supports font ligatures? I use Fira Code with Konsole and works fine but not with st terminal. Thanks for your video.

[@LucyPero]

Yes. His build has the ligatures patch. I just tested it with Fira Code and it renders ligatures well :)

[@teddybird7906]

Is it possible to recreate urxvt's fake transparency in st?

[@AdmiralMaur]

How do I know what kind of settings I can set using Xresources? Like is there a command that lists all the options xrdb can set?

[@LukeSmithxyz]

You can set literally any variable by any name you want, it's just an issue of what programs are looking for that variable.

[@AdmiralMaur]

@@LukeSmithxyz Oh, I see, thank you!

[@yuvaldahan642]

How do you keep it up to date with the upstream changes of st?

[@fuseteam]

me thinks it is git checkout for his changes git checkout master && git pull && git checkout && git rebase master for the keeping up with master xD

[@JohnHolmestheSecond]

git fetch --all git rebase upstream/master

[@thurston04]

Luke! How are you uncommenting and commenting blocks of text in vim?

[@MrIllusionT]

Hey Luke, i just started using yours LARBS file, to start understanding how to create my configuration. Today after installing tty-clock, my terminal display everything with a too wide letter spacing like: [ U s e r @ t e s t ] . But when i change font the word seems overlapping. St seems it doesn't have nothing related letter spacing. And other font overlapping themselves. Any idea? I tried to modified Xresource in .config, i didn't find other resource that i can modify

[@LukeSmithxyz]

github.com/LukeSmithxyz/LARBS/issues/186

[@MrIllusionT]

@@LukeSmithxyz thank you so much, work really well as a work-around.

[@mrmartinLgore]

Hi! I've been using st for a while now and there is one thing I haven't been able to figure out. In the config.h file there is an array called "shortcuts" and a little lower an array called "key". I changed some of the key bindings to my personal preference, but I couldn't figure out how to make the Del key delete the character to the right of my cursor. I looked through the key array, but I have no idea what these key codes are. Nor do I know if this is even the right place to look .. Maybe someone knows how to do this (?) :)

[@maxsilvester1327]

Put "tput smkx" in your bashrc

[@dinarteazevedo9339]

Hi Luke Smith, I have been watching a lot of your videos and I would like to know how to remove the title from the window bar that I open. To make it more or less like yours. I'm using i3wm with all the configurations that are already preinstalled. If you can give me a hint of how I do it, I would be grateful. Thank you and continue with your excellent work.

[@dinarteazevedo9339]

btw u did inspired me to use tilling window manager......o_O

[@SarusChannel]

What is the github theme you use?

[@LordOfWizardurl]

Gruvbox addon

[@musicamonarchy3062]

this video was recorded a month ago

[@copper4eva]

His date in his status bar says the 16th. So just a week ago.

[@JohnDoe-lq6cs]

would you recommend ST for me as a beginner? been using linux for 2 months. i also use vim.

[@petewest3122]

Install Luke's build and try it out. Worst case scenario is you don't like it, uninstall, and go back to your current terminal.

[@venomdedpol1179]

Is there a way of creating new terminals by splitting the view horizontally and vertically just like in the terminator terminal?

[@julius7574]

do you mean a tiling wm or tmux ?

[@venomdedpol1179]

@@julius7574 Yeah exactly like that

[@julius7574]

@@venomdedpol1179 okey?

[@ShahibShahariar]

does it support UTF-8?

[@Geolimber]

I have a problem with following a links. Usually when i want follow some link in mutt ST cut part of this link, so it is no valid when i follow it. Like email confirmation links, they are usually quite large.

[@LukeSmithxyz]

Are you using my build or the default build with the link follower? In my build, I have external pipe find urls from the entire screen only after deleting newlines to avoid this problem and I can follow multi-line urls without a problem.

[@Geolimber]

@@LukeSmithxyz yes, i am using your build. I think it's a problem of mutt. Because i see + on the begining of the line with multiline links. Think thats why url follower don't parse it completely.

[@GuerreroMisterioso95]

Has anyone tried to successfully enable ligatures?

[@philipplang3420]

I would like to discuss about wether it's better to use "j" for bigger and "k" for smaller font size, because j in vim essentially means "going down". What do you perfer for yourself?

[@kevyyar]

How did you uncomment like that when you changed themes on the terminal?

[@agsansoo]

Is there any way to change the letterSpace: in st ? Mine has changed, and is too wide now !

[@LukeSmithxyz]

Change your monospace font. That's an error in an upgrade to the Inconsolata font. Out of my control.

[@agsansoo]

@@LukeSmithxyz Changed to Liberation Mono ... st-luke-git works again. Thanks !

[@MrinalSaurabh]

Is there a thingy for Mac?? I would love this kind of terminal for my day to day work.

[@AtomToast]

yeah, you can install arch on your macbook

[@MrinalSaurabh]

@@AtomToast I tried... the admin guy didn't like it ... Stuck with OSX for now.. Until I get a replacement after 1 year..

[@MsGscoot]

How did you get that theme on github @ 3:58 ?

[@LordOfWizardurl]

Add-on

[@willowiscool]

How do you get the syntax highlighting while typing commands?

[@beron_the_colossus]

ZSH With zsh-syntax-highlighting IIRC

[@vkredgod2340]

github.com/zsh-users/zsh-syntax-highlighting ig he uses this

[@nstovl]

Can you do a video on how you get your fonts so crisp?

[@XDjUanZInHO]

It's probably on X configuration files. I forgot the actual folder but it's on some /etc/X11 directories that has some aliases to each of the font features: anti-aliasing, hinting,...

[@GonzaloOviedoLambert]

Did you see how fast he comment that section 9:45 ?. DAAMN, how tha hell?

[@jimbarino2]

Serious question: so the "suckless philosophy" prohibits have a configuration file. But with st, the source code is the config file, only you add the extra step of recompiling to just restarting or (horror of horrors) having any config changes take effect immediately. I tried st, and I have to say I just didn't see the point...

[@copper4eva]

In a config file you can often be limited in the options that the source code gives you. But with these suckless programs, because it's designed around editing the source code, you aren't limited in any way except for your knowledge of C. You can pretty much program any feature your imagination can come up with. Assuming you know how to code it of course.

[@timh.6872]

The thing that not having a config file grants you is eliminating the need for parsing a config file. Since everything is compiled in, the compiler deals with the parsing. However, it is a bit off to have to recompile an app to change config. It doesn't scale if you want to tweak aesthetic things for all of your suckless apps to make them look good and match. I think that there's a best of both worlds solution, but it ends up not being liked by either side: make config a per-user dynamically linked library. Oddly enough, this config use case is precisely what dynamic linking is actually really good at, forcing all linked processes to use the same values. But because it's code, config can also include full-blown functions, which is way more powerful than most config languages.

[@sonnyh6899]

How do you set vim to uncomment so fast ?

[@isaacbragg-gardiner2456]

been trying this out on my new arch machine, but it's totally not transparent at all as I see it. I see the "float alpha = 0.92; " in config.h, but it doesn't seem to work? Do I just have to adjust that number or do I need to be using Xresources to make it work?

[@CocolinoFan]

I've created the Xresorces text file inside .config and set the transparency there, plus I've changed the transparency in st/config.h but it does not work, my terminal is fully opaque. Any ideas anyone?

[@Royskooner]

ST is a normie terminal now. I switched to alacritty to get away from the noobs.

[@tharushasarange]

ikr??? I use xterm now since I noticed it has a lesser memory footprint and faster opening times

[@Peshyy]

pfsh, I switched to a gentoo stage4 usb stick. that's what elitists use nowadays

[@willpaxman5236]

@@Peshyy I use a raspberry pi with a telegraph button to code in binary as my dd

[@peterjansen4826]

I just use whatever works best for me. Try it, you might like it. ;)

[@sohn7767]

Peshyy only using a TTY of course

[@franciscosimoes466]

Alt-o and all other commands which use the Dmenu thing do not work for me

[@maxsilvester1327]

did you install dmenu?

[@arcowo]

Didn't you switch to Void?

[@tolmoli27]

What window manager do you use?

[@sharperguy]

Hey did you actually switch to bspwm, or are you still on dwm? Would be interesting to hear about your bspwm setup if so.

[@ac130kz]

nah, xterm-256color works great for me

[@KingZero69]

the SIMPle terminal... 😏

[@LukeSmithxyz]

Just uninstalled.

[@sucklessboi4718]

@@LukeSmithxyz What?

[@ledenec5122]

what magic was used 8:14?

[@sucklessboi4718]

nerd magic

[@MisterBrausepulver]

github.com/tpope/vim-commentary

[@traderdude9098]

How do I use this to stream pornography?

[@raphaelcardoso7927]

how is his pacman -Q syntax highlighted? goddamn

[@armynyus9123]

Going crazy with st-theming: github.com/axiros/suckless-add-ons ;-)

[@mairacristian54]

Anyone knows a font that has good support for asian characters aswell?

[@nonenothingnull]

Freefont If you're looking for pretty, that's a different thing

[@JohnHolmestheSecond]

noto-fonts-cjk

[@dr-deep8353]

i want this background

[@meeexy116]

how do I install st need help I'm new to Linux

[@rae6261]

if ur using arch: yay -S st-luke-git (u need Aur configured and yay helper for this command) or if ur not then check his description for GitHub link and the instructions are there

[@trafficcone3620]

Try alacritty if you haven't already

[@SimGunther]

He might think it's too bloated not just because it's written in rust, but the project itself isn't easy to patch without substantial rewrites to go around the batch of features that st doesn't come with by default. Might wanna ask Distrotube how he "patches" Alacritty and if he thinks it's better than st as far as "normie" terminal emulators that don't require manual patching like st.

[@trafficcone3620]

@@SimGunther why would it be bloated because of rust? I love software in rust because it is faster than c++ and memory safe

[@SimGunther]

@@trafficcone3620 I'd like a lot of safety benefits from rust to be in a language that's not as bloated and intrusive to my flow state as rust, but here's my experience with rust and Alacritty. There's like 250 dependencies needed for Alacritty in addition to the fact that a simple "hello world" program is 180kb when the c version is 8-16kb (with strip and size optimized compilations applied to both of these binaries). All the good info on minimizing rust binaries was from 2018 and not much of it applies to today's rust. I know that panics that don't about immediately, jemalloc, and the runtime contributes plenty to the bloated rust binary. Any hoops you need to jump through to get a most-compact rust binary isn't really worth it IMO. As much as I love the promises of Alacritty, it's not for my taste as far as pushing the limits of minimalism while also offering a simply extensible terminal instead of something that comes with a healthy enough feature list only to not be able to expand upon it without moving mountains. Ultimately, a rust to c transpiler would solve the minimal binary problem, but there's still the issue of the project's philosophy that doesn't align as well with what st offers. For what I do, st is simply good enough and I'm happy that we can both live with our tastes together. :)

[@trafficcone3620]

@@SimGunther really, I use void Linux and just used xbps and there was like 2 dependencies for alacritty