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I am wondering about my VPS providers ubuntu terminal.

Are all these terminals the same?

I think they are so user-UN-friendly.

I can't copy-paste into the terminal, when I try opening textfiles, I can't scroll up and down easily. I cant save easily. Nothing is easy...

Is it always like this with Ubuntu?

Is there any way to make it easier?

I use windows but I login to my vps provider with login details and then simply click "terminal" to open the terminal.

Please help me out here

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2 Answers

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Ok, first off it sounds like you're doing some kind of embedded web-shell app thingy. Don't do that.

Get SSH running, then tunnel a connection to a XVNC server that is secure behind your firewall. Start up gnome-session or kde and you should get what you're after. :)

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Or use PuTTY, for simple shell access. The web interface that is provided is for emergencies and generally is crappy -- it's basically like connecting via Serial. –  Kyle Smith May 25 '10 at 19:16
I wonder if it is one of those horrid web ilo things, like a serial console, but not as useful, cannot copy/paste, cannot scroll back, unreadable while output is scrolling. Who ever thought they were adequate? Though most have some way of enabling ssh access. –  Ronald Pottol May 25 '10 at 20:57
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You need to know that a terminal with a UNIX-like shell is not at all similar to what you are used to in Windows. Yes, you can copy and paste and yes, you can scroll whatever you like, but it has its own way of doing it.

How the things you like to do is accomplished depends on the terminal, and you don't mention what terminal you're using. If you are using putty, you copy text by just selecting it and you paste it using the right mouse button or shift+insert (if I remember the default settings correctly). Scrolling depends on what you want to scroll. A text file can be scrolled using less.

less mytextfile.txt


ls -lh | less

for listing a large directory.

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