Sorry, I have to agree with them. Your use case is... pretty much obsolete, at least in my opinion.

I can honestly say that I haven't even cared, never mind *needed* to, use write(1) to reach a locally-logged-in user running a local X terminal since 1993, when I left the UofM at a time when people still did stuff like run X apps remotely from multiple systems. This is a real world example of https://xkcd.com/1172/ from my perspective.

I use write *very* occasionally on systems where I know everyone has SSH'd in. Maybe once a year. They could deprecate write(1) and wall(8) altogether and I wouldn't shed many tears.

Having said that, yes getting working code deleted out from under you is really, really annoying. Especially from a group that navel-gazes and doesn't attempt to find out usage levels first.

OpenBSD, for example, deletes a *ton* of legacy code on a regular basis. But if you follow the mailing lists, you always have a say, your voice gets heard. Maybe ignored, but heard :-). Several times in my memory, they've refactored code instead of deleting it when 2 or 3 people politely objected.

Anyway, I don't have a neat solution wrapped up for you, sorry. I finally gave up on Linux as a desktop last year, and I was using gnome terminal to the bitter end (and not caring whether it wrote to utmp/wtmp or not <grin>).

-Adam

On July 3, 2017 1:44:16 AM CDT, Trevor Cordes <trevor@tecnopolis.ca> wrote:
On 2017-07-02 Adam Thompson wrote:
 Surely *one* of them will meet your needs?  And if not those, "dnf
 search terminal" should return about a hundred more.

I guess I should have reworded my question to: what's your favorite
terminal, and can you quickly check if it does my 3 must-have
requirements.  Ya, a bit lazy on my part, but also good to see what the
MUUG old hands have decided/perfected over the years.

I've tried a few other terms over the years, but they always lack one
of my must-haves or have some major flaw.  g-t is actually *very* nice,
if they would just stop deleting code (the cause of every grievance I've
ever filed)!!!

This, from the gnome bz I referenced, sums out their attitude: "decide
which ones are still relevant on _modern systems_, and remove the rest".

--
Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.