st

I revisited the 2018 LWN series “A look at terminal emulators” and re-read its notes on st.

Back then, the articles tested st 0.6/0.7 (Debian/Fedora) and 0.8.1 upstream, a fair snapshot of the time.

I went through the upstream st git history from 2018 → 2025 and mapped many of the issues discussed (Unicode/wide glyphs, input crashes, paste & tmux integration, redraw/latency, escape sequences) to the actual fixes that landed over the years.

No single “big patch”, just steady maintenance:
wide-glyph correctness, crash-class input fixes, bracketed paste terminfo, latency tuning, and modern escape/color handling.

I wrote a short technical note with links to the relevant commits:
https://4c6e.xyz/code_notes.html
(post: Revisiting ST after the 2018 LWN analysis)

I’ve been using st + tmux daily on Slackware and it’s been solid: minimal, fast, predictable — exactly what I want on X11.

#st #suckless #unix #tmux #x11 #slackware

Today in #FreeSoftwareAdvent, I realized how much my daily setup changed over the years.

I removed my external monitor and keyboard.
Not to be minimalist, but to reduce context switching.
I kept the mouse because speed still matters.

Working sometimes from my parents house made it clear that relying on an external monitor was fragile, so I forced myself to work only with the laptop.

The same thing happened with software.
Vim slowly became nvi.
Alacritty became xterm, then st.

I didn’t look for lighter tools, but for ones I could trust and reason about. Less abstraction, fewer surprises.

Today I use two identical laptops -- one for work, one personal -- same setup, side by side, one mouse for each.
The environment disappears, and the work stays.

#suckless #st #nvi #xterm