terminal ninja

Start here

New to the dojo? These are the pieces to read first:

• Best terminal emulators — the window you stare at all day matters more than your editor. Choose wisely.
• The modern CLI starter pack — ls and grep have been on the job since the seventies. These seven replacements actually noticed.
• Getting started with tmux — sessions that survive closed lids, dead VPNs, and the train going into a tunnel.
• The SSH config file — stop typing IP addresses like a Victorian clerk. Name your hosts and be done with it.

Guides

• Customise your shell prompt with Starship — because the default prompt tells you nothing and looks dreadful doing it.
• Terminal keyboard shortcuts — the mouse is a lovely device. For other people.
• Getting started with tmux — persistence, panes, and a starter config that fixes the defaults worth fixing.
• tmux cheat sheet — every default binding in tables, for when you know what you want and not which key does it.
• The SSH config file — named hosts, key-based login, and the first-match-wins rule that catches everyone.
• Zsh without the bloat — Oh My Zsh is a theme park. Forty lines of .zshrc is a shell.
• Manage your dotfiles — that carefully tuned setup lives on one machine until it doesn’t. Git already knows how to fix this.
• Git config: the settings worth stealing — git’s defaults were chosen for everyone who has ever used it. Twenty lines choose them for you instead.
• Truecolor in tmux, SSH and Vim — your colour scheme is fine. Something between it and the screen is lying about TERM.
• jq: parsing JSON on the command line — the API replied with four thousand characters on one line. Fish out the field you wanted.
• fzf: fuzzy finding anything — stop remembering paths and command history. Type three letters at it instead.
• ripgrep (rg) cheat sheet — grep’s defaults were the problem, not you. Plus the four reasons it can’t see your file.
• Bash strict mode — set -euo pipefail, the four places it quietly gives up, and a script header worth pasting everywhere.

Every guide, grouped by what you’re actually trying to get done: all guides.

Gear and tools

• Best terminal emulators — Ghostty, Warp, kitty, WezTerm, Alacritty, iTerm2 and Windows Terminal, honestly compared.
• Terminal feature support matrix — truecolor, undercurl, sixel, OSC 52 and the rest, across six macOS terminals. The feature lists, cross-examined.
• Linux terminal feature support matrix — the same cross-examination for nine Linux terminals, from GNOME Terminal and Konsole to foot and xterm.
• Ghostty vs iTerm2 — the upstart against the incumbent, and the one iTerm2 feature that ends the argument.
• Alacritty vs kitty — both fast, both a text file, and completely opposed on how much a terminal should do.
• tmux vs Zellij — modes versus the prefix key, and the one reason the older tool still wins on a server.
• Best mechanical keyboards — you’re going to press those keys millions of times. They may as well sound magnificent.
• Best terminal fonts — the typeface you stare at all day, and what the Nerd Font business is actually about.
• The modern CLI starter pack — the Unix classics, rebuilt for this century.

The lot, with the trade-offs left in: all tools and gear.