Terminal Preferences

April 4th, 2022
cli, tech
I do most of my coding, writing, etc on the command line, so: some views on terminals.

I like having lots of terminals side-by-side, to see many different things simultaneously. Most places I've worked have kept code to 80 columns, with two-space indentation, which is a good fit for my approach. Here's how I usually have my terminals set up:

The monitor is 27", at 2560x1440 ("QHD"). This has room for five 83x101 terminals, though I usually divide my rightmost terminal vertically for long-running commands or interactive prompts.

On traditional resolution (non-retina) displays, I have a strong preference for bitmap fonts without antialiasing. They are much clearer at a given size, which allows fitting much more text on a screen. In iterm2 this means selecting Monaco Regular at 10pt, and leaving the "antialiased" box unchecked, under Profiles > Text.

At some point I could see moving to a higher resolution display, but probably not until 5K monitors (my current resolution, but 4x the pixels) are widely available and reasonably cheap. High resolution displays are a bit nicer, but I don't mind the regular kind.

Aside from moving from Linux to Mac, and getting wider monitors, this is a setup I've had for a long time.

Referenced in:

Comment via: facebook, lesswrong, substack

Recent posts on blogs I like:

Information control, isolation, and ideological abuse

[I have freelanced for a number of effective altruist organizations, such as the Centre for Effective Altruism and 80,000 Hours.

via Thing of Things March 11, 2026

The Newest Technology in Frozen

There are lots of different things in Frozen that are new-ish, but my dad and I were wondering: what is the actual newest thing in Frozen? This led me to watch Frozen a lot while taking notes. Some of the things I found included: Elastic hair-ties A safety …

via Lily Wise's Blog Posts March 1, 2026

2025-26 New Year review

This is an annual post reviewing the last year and setting intentions for next year. I look over different life areas (work, health, parenting, effectiveness, etc) and analyze my life tracking data. Highlights include a minimal group house, the usefulness…

via Victoria Krakovna January 19, 2026

more     (via openring)