The Unix terminal, or just simply, the terminal, can be found being applied in almost every facet of computing. It is available across all major platforms and often integrated into other applications. Due to its ubiquity, even marginal improvements to the terminal have the potential to make massive improvements to productivity on a global scale. We believe that evolutionary improvements to the terminal, in its current incarnation as windowed terminal emulator, are possible and that developing a thorough understanding of issues that current terminal users face is fundamental to knowing how the terminal should evolve. In order to develop that understanding we have mined Unix and Linux Stack Exchange using a fully-reproducible method which was able to extract and categorize 91.0% of 1,489 terminal-related questions (from the full set of nearly 240,000 questions) without manual intervention. We present an analysis, to our knowledge the first of its kind, of windowed terminal-related questions posted over a 15-year period and viewed, in aggregate, approximately 40 million times. As expected, given its longevity, we find the terminal's many features being applied across a wide variety of use cases. We find evidence that the terminal, as windowed terminal emulator, has neither fully adapted to its now current graphical environment nor completely untangled itself from features more suited to incarnations in previous environments. We also find evidence of areas where we believe the terminal could be extended along with other areas where it could be simplified. Surprisingly, while many current efforts to improve the terminal include improving the terminal's social and collaborative aspects, we find little evidence of this as a prominent pain point.

翻译：Unix终端，或简称为终端，几乎应用于计算的各个层面。它可在所有主流平台上使用，并常被集成到其他应用程序中。由于其普遍性，即使对终端进行微小改进，也可能在全球范围内大幅提升生产力。我们认为，在当前窗口化终端模拟器的形态下，对终端进行渐进式改进是可行的，而深入了解当前终端用户面临的问题，对于明确终端应如何演进至关重要。为此，我们采用完全可复现的方法挖掘了Unix和Linux Stack Exchange，从近24万个问题的全集中自动提取并分类了1,489个终端相关问题的91.0%，无需人工干预。我们首次对15年间发布的窗口化终端相关问题进行了分析，这些问题累计浏览量约达4,000万次。正如预期，鉴于其悠久历史，我们发现终端的众多功能被应用于各种用例中。有证据表明，作为窗口化终端模拟器，终端既未完全适应当前的图形环境，也未彻底摆脱更适合先前环境形态的功能特性。我们还发现了一些终端可扩展的领域，以及其他可简化的方面。令人惊讶的是，尽管当前许多改进终端的努力包括增强其社交与协作功能，但我们发现这并非显著的痛点。