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I've been using konsole (KDE 4.2) for a while now but it crashed recently. Konsole is efficiently designed to use one instance for all of the windows for your entire X session. Extra-unfortunately, because of this ingenuity the crash brought down all the humpty-dumptys and their bashes and their bashes' applications and all the begattens' begattens all the way down to Jebodiah Springfield into one big flat nonexistent omelette.

The fact that this app is capable of crashing under any circumstances is pretty disappointing. Although KDE 4.2 is not expected to be entirely stable -- and yes, I know, I should update my distro -- it's still a no-sell for me, since if at all possible, this sort of thing Shouldn't Happen to something that's likely to be a foundation for an entire working environment. Maybe this is arrogant and unrealistic, but if it's possible to have something more stable, I want it.

So other than running under screen -- which is fun, nifty, and thus far flawless in its reliability, but which has some issues with not understanding certain keycodes -- I'm looking for ways to improve my environment's reliability. The most obvious strategy is to cast about for a more reliable console app. A standard featureset -- which to me includes tabbed windows, Unicode support, and a decent level of keyboard shortcut configuration -- is pretty much essential. I'm currently running gnome-terminal and roxterm, both of which have acceptable featuresets (pretty much identical, actually; I think rox is actually the superset), and neither of which have provided me with extensive, objective reliability data. Not that they were expected to.

Other strategies are also welcome. Were I responding to this question I would perhaps suggest backgrounding critical tasks with & and/or disowning them so they don't come down with the global pandemic. And stuff like that.

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I'm pretty sure that xterm is well tested by this point. I don't remember it ever crashing in the 15 or so years that I've been using it.

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That might be an option at this point, since I'm using screen for pretty much everything and as a consequence not using multiple tabs. Though I suspect that there will be at least one thing — colour customization, key mapping, etc — that will be a hassle or an impossibility to get set up on xterm. Of course since I"m using screen it doesn't matter so much if it crashes. –  intuited Apr 2 '10 at 16:35
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I use yakuake usually, but you will encounter the same kind of issues you have had with Konsole. That said, KDE 4.3 is more stable than 4.2 imo, so switching to 4.3 could help with stability. I also use screen on most machines I connect to, which really helps, and like I said in your other post about screen, I would encourage you to use byobu to enhance your screen experience.

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Cool, thanks. I like yakuake a lot too. Though I kind of don't feel like I can trust any KDE stuff to be stable now.. I feel like one crash is pretty clear evidence that stability wasn't nearly enough of a priority during the design and architecture process to make it thoroughly reliable. Admittedly "thoroughly reliable" is a bit of a wild goose. I also feel like although your answer is interesting it's not really the answer to my question... ;p –  intuited Dec 21 '09 at 2:59
Also: have you ever had screen crash for no real good reason? –  intuited Dec 21 '09 at 3:06
KDE4 is more unstable than KDE3 for sure. A huge work has been done to rewrite everything on top of a whole new desktop API. I've never really experienced screen crash that I can remember. –  ℝaphink Dec 21 '09 at 7:19
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If you are really scared start screen sessions for all your important shells.

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It's a good suggestion but doesn't really answer the question :) –  intuited Apr 2 '10 at 16:35
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