what is the best linux terminal? I have been using alacritty for years and have been doing well. But I don’t think kitty and st. I was wondering if any new projects have come out in recent years.
I consider st a great choice when using i3 or dwm. Customizing it takes time, but RAM usage is what I usually check and in case of st it is comically small.
Surprised nobody mentioned Yakuake. Just discovered it’s just for kde. Been using it for years. It hides at the top of my screen and slides down when the cursor hits the top. Full desktop when not used and can access it no matter which app I’m using.
Am I the only one that’s fine with whatever the OS provides out of the box? Like, as long as I can turn the bell off and change the font, I’m chillin, and I have yet to run into a terminal that doesn’t provide those options.
Curious to hear what drives people to seek out other options (besides tiling, that I understand, I’m a tabs guy myself tho)
Online trends I saw on the internet was the reason I hopped around multiple terminals. Use case for me it made no difference.
There’s 4 other terminals I did enjoy using but xterm became my go to after I got tired of hopping around.
Wen I first installed Linux I was like “I need the best fancy termanal” and wastes some time only not be satisfied with the results and installing tons of bloat. Now I always just use what I get by default from the distro I happen to be on 😂 I don’t even know what I want
I always do minimal installs, so eh… guess that is a “Yes and no” for me.
Image display is an important feature for me. If konsole supported it, I’d just use that. If I’m on a gnome system I’ll pretty much always change the terminal because gnome terminal has a lot of issues with font rendering that I find annoying
konsole does support sixel images
In my case it’s resource consumption, efficiency the impact with the windows manager I use, how much is keyboard controllable. It seems strange to me that a linux user uses the default applications. The beauty of linux is the huge variety and the ability to customize. If you use allova ready-made things, a mac or windows is fine too
It seems strange to me that a linux user uses the default applications
I sorta get what you’re saying, but rather than just pick any random distro and handpick every application myself, I put effort into finding a distro which has the most default apps that I’m happy with. I use KDE Neon because I like Dolphin, Konsole, Konqueror, and the pre-installed version of VLC; however, I DON’T use the default email client, text editor, etc.
I don’t know I never felt the need to customize the terminal. I just like what it comes with. It feels wrong to change that. Black background and colored text is fine. The rest of the OS though damn it’s like a fucking birthday party! Nothing’s at default ffs
In the past I have found myself working with laptops with few resources and small screen (eeepc). Every pixel gained was a big win, and finding equivalent lightweight, high-performance applications could make all the difference. Eventually I found the optimal solution with i3 as windows manager and alacritty was the best terminal to use together (and zsh). Since then even though I have no real need I have continued to use this approach. And in the end being careful about pc resource consumption is also an ethical choice, if the pc consumes less power it is a gain for the environment.
deleted by creator
Not a new project, but I feel is often overlooked: Sakura. I’ve fallen back to it repeatedly over the years. It is lightweight, opinionated but sane. Not as brutalist as st. I combo it with Tmux using powerline with little tweaking.
It uses standard libraries and stays out of the way.
Konsole is awesome and has great integration with Plasma ofc. I’m surprised to see it barely mentioned.
I use the one that comes with my DE, but if I am using a WM I use kitty
I usually just get by with Alacritty and Zellij, pairs pretty well together.
People keep recommending terminal emulators, but I think they’re missing your point.
I’m not aware of anyone making new terminals these days. In my opinion DIGITAL is still king. They are getting a bit hard to come by. VT220 used to be the gold standard, but a VT420 or VT520 is still worth it if you can find one.
Looks like there are a few VT420s on eBay going for up to $200. Prices aren’t what they used to be.
They specifically mentioned alacritty which is a terminal emulator
Yes, and now they’re looking for a real terminal
Ah yes you can tell by the post title:
best linux terminal emulator
The one with your distro shipped with
If they care about terminal emulators, it’s unlikely their distro came with one preinstalled.
What’s wrong with kitty?
I’ve been using kitty for some time didn’t had any issues, and multiplexing is useful.
PS: i used tmux for many years, and still use on headless
I personally don’t use Kitty because, for me, it’s much slower to open compared to Alacritty. :)
Alacritty is fine. If you’re not combining it with tmux and zsh/fish, id pluck those fruits first.
Tmux was too complicated for me so I’m using Byobu instead
Tmux with a few custom key bindings is amazing. Kind of a learning curve, but not nearly as difficult as something like Vim.
Tmux with a few custom key bindings
Yeah, like I said: Byobu! :p
Foot is the best
For me: Wezterm. It does pretty much everything. I don’t think Alacritty/Kitty etc. offer anything over it for my usage, and the developer is a pleasure to engage with.
Second place is Konsole – it does a lot, is easy to configure, and obviously integrates nicely with KDE apps.
Honorable mention is Extraterm, which has been working on cool features for a long time, and is now Qt based.
+1 for Wezterm, it also had image support that Alacritty didn’t have, which I needed for Yazi to work.
I’ve heard good things about Warp too but Wezterm is where I’ll be for now.
I wanted to love it, but I keep getting crashes in mixed dpi environments on wayland.
I moved to foot instead. Bare bones, but unobtrusive enough. Shame the scrollbar is jank.
Oh, is that #4948?
Seems likely! Not me, but my experience mirrors it pretty closely
There is no one-size-fits-all, but for fits most, you’re looking at KDE’s Konsole or GNOME’s new Terminal (formerly Ptyxis). Everything else is going to be niche, with special use cases. What are your specific needs?
