Cool Retro Term unless your actually running ELKS on an 8086 or happen to be reading this off a VT05 attached to a PDP-11.
this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2025
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Linux vtty forever! Can't cat data into the framebuffer when your desktop is getting in the way!!
Jk I use gnome terminal for everything, or whatever default is available. It's quite amazing that most of them handle all but the most niche terminal features these days.
When I need to install a terminal emulator for some reason I always go for urxvt.. but it is pretty terrible (it's a great vt but mouse interaction is clunky and graphics are old school) compared to pretty much everything else.
I have determined that foot is best for me personally, like alacritty and a couple others, it is very barebones. No tabs or anything like that without tmux. But it doesn't rely on GPU acceleration and is just as fast (or faster) than my experience using GPU accelerated terminals. Easy to configure and since it doesn't have the GPU requirements it works on old hardware like a dream. Only possible issue is that it is wayland only but since that is all I like to use it is perfect.
I find a lot like ghostty and wezterm try to include too many features. All I need a terminal emulator to be is a terminal emulator. But then a lot of these then add tabs, build in multiplexers & more and it is more bloated than I like a simple utility to be. Additionally, I don't need native tabs as a lot I do in the terminal uses SSH so it is easier just to use tmux/zilji and not have to manage it as much.
Surprised that there's so few drop-down terminals being mentioned; I use Tilda but I guess they are all fine as long as they work on one's distro config. It's so handy to always have the console locked and loaded invisibly, but toggled by the press of a button.
I use Yakuake almost exclusively. I was wondering how difficult it would be to modify it to open from the bottom of the screen instead of the top.
...weird. I don't understand why drop-down terminals are a thing? I can bring up Konsole with a hotkey too, only it just opens a window instead fo doing a fancy animation. That's such a tiny part of its functionality that I can't imagine how 'drop-down' became a descriptor for a terminal instead of just a bullet point on a feature list somewhere, much less a whole-ass category of terminals, lol.
But, fair enough.
…weird. I don’t understand why drop-down terminals are a thing? I can bring up Konsole with a hotkey too, only it just opens a window instead fo doing a fancy animation. That’s such a tiny part of its functionality that I can’t imagine how ‘drop-down’ became a descriptor for a terminal instead of just a bullet point on a feature list somewhere, much less a whole-ass category of terminals, lol.
But, fair enough.
Totally agree that objectively it's a tiny part. However, for one, I'𝗆 simply used to it because that how terminals behave in games, and two, because terminals with drop-down as a feature were the only ones that introduced me to a one-button hotkey, just like in a game.
Sure, I get the appeal as a feature, just not as a descriptor/category.
Anything is fine unless you're using the terminal very heavily. Almost all of my workflow is within the terminal so I want everything to be as fast as possible. I want a minimal, low config, fast terminal that has the exact same behavior when using the same config on Linux and MacOS (I know, fuck me, I have to use it for work). And those are Alacritty and Ghostty. I hate Alacritty's horrible icon so I use Ghostty.
If you want features, I suggest you try Kitty. It is probably the terminal with the most features. I personally prefer Alacritty because it is quite bare and doesn't have all that fancy stuff that I don't need (and that takes up cpu cycles).
It's not nice to make people read through half of your post to find out your question, sir.
Moreover, does the result produced by a search engine not be sufficient? Do you genuinely want Lemmy user's opinions?
That's why it was right there in the title? What else did you imagine I meant when I titled that post 'the terminal question'?
And yes, I genuinely value the opinions of others (because they can explain why they hold them) over the opinions of AI-generated listicles and 10 year old reddit posts that offer no explanation. Is that not why you participate in internet forums like lemmy?
That's why it was right there in the title?
To me it wasn't. The question would be "What terminals do you guys use?"
Please blame AI for internet search all you want, but there are ways to filtered AI-generated posts. For example, search on specific sites which you trust (I don't know, lemmy.ml as the obvious choice, perhaps?).
Did you miss the important part of the comment you're replying to?
What else did you imagine I meant when I titled that post ‘the terminal question’?
Did you think 'the terminal' question meant something else, or are you just ignoring the whole thing because you're dead-set on being an ass?
Dude, look, I gave you some advise on how to get information from search engines, and efficiently ask a question when that fails to deliver. If you don't like it, simply walk away. Feel free to block me or downvote me too. Argue with me does you no good.
No, what you did is come into a productive post with a fair amount of serious engagement--and no apparent confusion about what I meant from anyone else--with an attitude and a snarky comment. I tried in my response to ignore that and sincerely engage with your question and you decided to double-down. So I'm gonna take that as a solid 'yes' re:dead-set on being an ass and go do something more productive with my time. Have a lovely day.
I used urxvt on my last install, but now I'm using Kitty because urxvt on Debian isn't compiled with true colour and I didn't want to install from source.
I'm using Kitty. Kitten ssh is smooth as I ssh into other machines a lot. I also love being able to split the screen and have tabs. I use Kitty session a lot, I have a pre-configured yaml file that just sets up the terminal for me. I like the keyboard shortcuts too.
xfce4-terminal, in wayland+niri too. Because alternatives are always missing some features or are too bloated.
Do you use any of the other XFCE stuff with Niri? Or just the terminal?
Not yet. Panel autohide is bound to the WM (notebook display is small enough already), which doesn't work with niri. Currently fiddling with Waybar. I just need a task panel, tray and clock + battery.
Wezterm has been my daily for years. Has enough extras to let any crazy terminal app work as intended but doesn't try to do too much.
I like Tilix
+1 for Tilix, iirc there is some back end adjustment you have to make for full use of its features, but its easy to apply and has a link to run you though it. Once that's done, it's really customizeable and can look great.
I recently tried out some terminals but in the end it didn't really make all that big of a difference, maybe because I use tmux so I don't need split functionality. For a long time I used Gnome Console because it came with my distro but then I tried Ghostty because some people said it was the best and I also thought I was missing out. However for me it was mostly the same as before and it was cool in a way but for some reason it didn't really click. Now I am using Wezterm because other people said it's the best and what i like is that it comes as a flatpak and it is configured using Lua. But I could just go back to Gnome Console if I had to.
I am perfectly happy with Konsole, and sleep well despite perhaps missing out on features I don't know about.
I love foot. The only caveat is that it's only for Wayland (no X support).
Ghostty 👻
What's so great about Ghostty?
I'm using st with tmux. It's in written in c, simple configuration can be done by editing the header file(s). More complex customization (such as visual bell or transparency) can be done via patch files.
Not the most beginner friendly terminal but super light weight and fast.
I was tinkering with ollama+deepseek and trying to integrate it into my bash functions, but gave up, because i could not supress that stupid "thinking..." prompt. Found it easyer to just have a browser window open (switching windows can become muscle memory in tiling wms like i3/sway or dwm).
Terminator is my weapon of choice. Supports tabs, multiple terminals per tab, multiple terminal input and a lot of other neat stuff.
I concur it just works good choice
My suggestion is you focus more on learning to use the terminal than figuring out which one to use. Switching terminals is like a micro version of distro hopping without the benefits.
I use ollama for llms, but being a terminal tool, you need to be comfortable using the terminal.
To answer your original question, I use alacritty. Minimal bells and whistles. Just a terminal.
Uhh, switching terminals is nothing like distro-hopping, that's a ridiculous analogy. You might need to configure the new terminal, but that's it, and there's no cost or conflict.
You don't really need anything fancy, but... I use Kitty because why not make things pretty
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