GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 335949
don't use beep on tab as default option
Last modified: 2016-02-21 15:01:17 UTC
That bug has been described on https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/gnome-terminal/+bug/34745 "Gnome-terminal beeps on tab. On an office full of Ubuntus, continous beeping is annoying. Beeping can be turned off from Edit:Current Profile:General:Terminal Bell. However, tab completition is one of the most used features of bash shell. There is absolutely no point in beeping all the time. Even though this is "just" an interface issue, it is something almost every user wants to change right away. Suggestion: change the default to no terminal bell."
I don't think changing this in gnome-terminal makes the most of sense. The first thing I do in a new install is to bring up gnome-sound-properties and in the System Bell tab, check Visual feedback and choose Flash window titlebar. Maybe we should pop up tip of the day notifications when people newly install GNOME :-D.
> The first thing I do That's the first thing everyone wants to do. Nobody (and his workmates in the same office) wants beeping on tabs. But not everyone knows how to do it - I have disabled from a different place, and most beginners just tolerate the noise. I don't think tip of the day is as good as a smart default. Because disabling beeping is what most of us want, I think it should be the default.
Ok, then make that the default. I would appreciate it too. But that was not my point. My point was that it doesn't belong into gnome-terminal. That said, there are situations that people would like to have the beep. For example my mailer beeps when I receive an email, and I appreciate that when I'm home roaming around and not at my desk. But since I've disable the beep, I lose that too. So, depending on what you want to do, there are different ways. For example you can put some magic in your ~/.inputrc to disable the beep on tab completion... The point of these all as I said, is that adding an option to gnome-terminal to disable the beep is none of the solutions IMHO.
Behdad: Gnome-terminal already has such an option (even in the UI). But I agree that changing the default would be bad. If you do not want tab-completion to beep, set that not to beep (ignoring them in gnome-terminal only avoids it).
Adding this to ~/.inputrc or /etc/inputrc works for example: # use a visible bell if one is available set bell-style visible Something not quite irrelevant: I had a quite embarrasing moment when I booted the GNOME 2.14 when I was in the office and its LONG login sound went as loud as my speakers could. Well, I believe a default install should not make any sound, and that should be set up through GNOME sound settings. Seeking a solution in gnome-terminal's defaults doesn't look like optimal to me.
This is a bash issue, not a gnome-terminal issue. I, of course, have a .inputrc with that line in it, and I am quite annoyed that it defaults the way it does. But this problem is with bash.
Agreed, beeping is useful and often important feedback that something has gone awry, regardless of whether bash like to use it for tab. Please do not disable gnome-terminal beeps by default.
Two things that make this much much nicer: * Set the beep to be a "bip", i.e. say 440 Hz at 50 ms. (gconf-editor, or xset allow this). * Make tab completion work optimally: in inputrc, do: set show-all-if-ambiguous on (result: *far* more useful response to tabs, far less beeps) Both of these are really useful changes, and I second the "Did you know" suggestion. Incidentally, show-all-if-ambiguous is on by default in Mandriva and Gentoo, but Debian/Ubuntu/Fedora all leave it off.
Not a gnome-terminal bug as per comment 1, 3, 4 .