When I used Emacs, Eshell was perhaps my favorite feature. I loved how modern it felt in many ways; why shouldn’t you be able to just `cd` into a remote location (TRAMP+SSH under the hood), or invoke Elisp commands like Magit straight from the shell. It could however be quite slow, and choked on some common escape codes (e.g. the progress bars emitted by the modern Ubuntu `apt` command.)
Regarding curses, I found that there was two solutions. The first is to automatically spawn curses apps in a proper terminal emulator, you just have to setup the `visual-commands` variable properly. The second alternative is to replace curses apps with Emacs apps, e.g. htop to helm-top. Personally, I ended up going the second route after a while, as I realized that there are actually very few curses apps that are important to me, and that Emacs apps are better integrated if you use Emacs for everything else.
If you rely on a lot of curses apps, a “real” terminal like emacs-libvterm may however suit you better. Renders curses apps and emojis as well as any other terminal I’ve used. It’s also much faster than ansi-term and friends at rendering.
Regarding curses, I found that there was two solutions. The first is to automatically spawn curses apps in a proper terminal emulator, you just have to setup the `visual-commands` variable properly. The second alternative is to replace curses apps with Emacs apps, e.g. htop to helm-top. Personally, I ended up going the second route after a while, as I realized that there are actually very few curses apps that are important to me, and that Emacs apps are better integrated if you use Emacs for everything else.
If you rely on a lot of curses apps, a “real” terminal like emacs-libvterm may however suit you better. Renders curses apps and emojis as well as any other terminal I’ve used. It’s also much faster than ansi-term and friends at rendering.