Edit: What will things look like 40 years from now.
Originally posted September 15, 2020 on AIXchange
Rob McNelly dips into 80s nostalgia and discovers how amazing it is to have a terminal and a PC on one desk.
Once I saw this, I had to try it:
cool-retro-term is a terminal emulator which mimics the look and feel of the old cathode tube screens. It has been designed to be eye-candy, customizable, and reasonably lightweight.
It uses the QML port of qtermwidget (Konsole) developed by me.
This terminal emulator works under Linux and macOS and requires Qt 5.2 or higher.
Settings such as colors, fonts and effects can be accessed via context menu.
Check out the screen shots. Those of you of a certain age will likely feel nostalgic when you see them. While I wouldn’t say this emulator is practical for my day to day system management needs, installing it on a Linux desktop and running through the different colors and computer types and fonts was pretty easy.
And by the way, other emulators are also bringing back that distinct 80s look. I’m definitely going to try Guake.
When I started in this industry, my only computer access was a single console on a desk. I’m not being flippant when I say that advancing to the point where I had both a terminal and a PC on the same desk was an amazing day. It’s safe to say that the computing access and network ubiquity I currently enjoy would be unfathomable to me in the days when amber and green screens were all I knew.