Sensible defaults

After using the same tools for over ten years (Gnome terminal running tmux with Vim), I decided to try more modern ones. However, the cost of change can be high. This is why I appreciate tools with sensible, deliberate defaults. I can start using them right away, and tweak the settings later.

Ghostty

I switched from Gnome Terminal to Ghostty and I immediately adopted it. It's very responsive and it has useful features. Here are some that come out of the box:

  • System clipboard integration that just works
  • JetBrains Mono with built-in Nerd Fonts support, including ligatures and many icons

As a result, my entire Ghostty configuration is only two lines:

❯ cat ~/.config/ghostty/config
theme = Gruvbox Dark
bold-is-bright = true

Zellij

I recently tried Zellij to replace tmux, and it has been a great experience. The developers put a lot of thought into their key bindings, making them both familiar and discoverable.

  • It's easy to switch from tmux because Zellij replicates familiar tmux bindings
  • Newcomers can learn by displaying a bar at the bottom showing the available commands. This eliminates the need for a cheat sheet

Zellij comes with many improvements over tmux in its default configuration. For example, it can resurrect a session after a crash and handles mouse input and clipboard integration gracefully. I also appreciated the thoughtful configuration file with commented default values and suggested replacements that can easily be set by uncommenting them.

// Choose the base input mode of zellij.
// Default: normal
//
// default_mode "compact"

Sway

Not every tool I've adopted follows this pattern. Switching to Sway as a window manager is an example. My two objectives were to improve performance and become familiar with Wayland so I could form my own opinion. Sway is ideal for someone comfortable in a terminal and I'm happy with it, also Wayland has been stable so far. However, transitioning from something mainstream like Gnome was difficult at first. You need to know a few shortcuts beforehand if you don't want to get stuck and search them on your phone. Sway took real research to get the status bar right and feel like home.

Tools with sensible defaults respect your time. They allow you to evaluate whether the tool fits your workflow before requiring you to invest time in configuration. That's often the difference between adopting and abandoning a tool.