So, Konsole shipped by default with KDE Plasma, my current Desktop Environment. While I don’t have a problem with it, I am interested in what other people are using, because there very likely is something better out there.
Specifically I’ve seen talk of Kitty and Alacritty, although I’ve also read that the dev of Kitty is allegedly kind of a jerk, so I am specifically interested in how Konsole matches up to Alacritty in your experience, but other suggestions and general terminal emulator discussion are also welcome!
I don’t get the fixation people have with terminals. I don’t think I’ve ever used one in Linux that made me think “you know, I need to install a better terminal emulator”. So I just use what comes with my DE.
Providing it has tabs, I’ll use it.
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Nowadays I don’t use the CLI much. But back in the day I used vim professionally and still didn’t care. Maybe because I ran everything from within vim?
I like customizing mine and switch DEs often, and use multiple across different devices. It’s easier to find one good terminal that can share a config and work well on each device and DE.
I am on EndeavourOS and install packages via the command line and on top of that I primarily use Neovim, so I spend a decent amount of time in the terminal
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Understandable and fair. I enjoy trying different stuff though. I’m not saying other people need to switch to another terminal emulator, I’m just here to ask what everyone else is using and then try it out myself, for fun :3
Edit: To add onto that, if I didn’t wanna try new stuff, I’d still be on Windows. I never had any major problems with it until I discovered the things Linux does better, and so if I just went with what seems fine I’d still be using Windows now. There’s not an inherent problem with that, of course, but overall the switch has benefited me. I like trying new things, you know?
I get that, but even when I worked as a coder using vim I didn’t care. What makes, let’s say, Gnome terminal a bad terminal?
There are two kinds of powerusers, and they DO NOT understand each other one bit.
The first, like you, just wants to get shit done and want to avoid the friction of choosing/installing/configuring their tools. GNOME, Chromium, and VSCode will do just fine.
The second, like me, wants to get shit done as well, but has a strong need for a very specific workflow. I’ll spend half an hour to get a toolchain working on nvim instead of using a pre-baked VSCode plugin. Not because VSCode is bad, but because I have a very (!) specific workflow and associated muscle memory and anything else distracts and unsettles me.
Some of the best engineers I know fall into either category, neither way is superior it’s just how brains are wired.
Anyway I use Kitty because it allows me to split tabs into windows (not windows into tabs! ew!), has low latency with high throughput thanks to GPU rendering, and a low memory footprint.
Oh that made a ton of sense! I don’t customize as much because I’m a completionist and would waste a whole week on it and not even change much from defaults anyway.
I also checked kitty and terminator and I can see the appeal. I’m used to opening separate windows and tile them using window manager commands to get a similar effect.
Thanks for your response, that was an eye opener!
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I’m also on Gnome, but I use Konsole for the ‘Copy Input to Tab’ or ‘Copy Input to All Tabs in window.’ In my use case scenario, it’s super helpful to be able to type or paste a cmd once, and have it populate multiple tabs, or specific tabs in multiple windows. It does take a little tweaking to get it to obey the dark theme settings, but once upon a time I actually created a custom dark theme, just so I could use Konsole on Gnome. Things are much easier these days 😁 I’ll have to check out Tilix, I haven’t heard of it before, but that may be b/c I literally work by myself in the dank dark basement of the building…I don’t think the cleaning crew even knows that I’m down here
since you seem to consider alacritty, which is pretty minimal in features, maybe give foot a shot as well. i find it fits best into tiling wm land (sway, river, etc.) so might not be your cup of tea…
Been using foot for like 5 years now. It just gels so damn well with tiling wms and super fast.
what does it better than any other terminal for twms?
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It all depends by what you need it for.
I remember the first years I approached Linux I wanted to try every bit of software and that made me waste a lot of time and energy because I hadn’t already learned to ask myself that question.
If you just need a terminal to run updates and basic commands, stick with what your distro is shipped with. It will be better integrated and well tested and will save you a lot of time.
If you need something in specific instead, you’ll be able to find the software with a feature set that will match all your needs.I have been using https://apps.kde.org/yakuake/ for years. Having the command line available with a simple key combo while not cluttering up any task manager is great.
I switched from Alacritty to Wezterm because I wanted ligature support and it’s also written in Rust. I really like it, though it had some issues with Wayland so I had to install a -git package but it’s fixed now. It also has a bunch of features I don’t use so I can’t really talk about those. I you don’t care about ligatures and the features, use Alacritty, it’s really good.
Wez is actually pretty awesome too
I like wezterm a lot but lately have not been impressed with some breaking changes on the main branch. I know its basically a nightly release, but that’s the recommended way to install according to their website. The devs acknowledged it, and recommended using a tiling manager as the fix.
Alacritty is really nice and easy to configure, and isn’t “tied” to any desktop environment, like Konsole is. Kitty is really cool for its implementation of image display. Foot is a Wayland-native alternative that is also really nice to use.
+1 for kitty. Embedded images for Ranger is super cool. The only downside is i’ve been getting rendering issues for a couple seconds after waking up from suspend but that’s probably a configuration issue on my end
Konsole is goated, legit really good.
Second to it would be Kitty in my opinion
Foot but its limited for the averaged user. While it does support most standards its got no ui, configuration is done through a text editor and foots config file.
Personally I like it. Light weight and robust
Kitty is a great choice But I also enjoyed konsole for its SSH Alias’s
One feature foot is missing is ligatures. So if that is important to you, you’ll need to look for an alternative.
The dev of foot is an awesome person though, so that could offset the missing feature for some :-)
I found Wezterm to be quite nice.
Same, nice to see it get some love. I’ve tried a whole bunch of them, Wez is also a super nice guy and very active on GitHub.
I use Tilix, mostly because I’m used to it. I should probably upgrade to the plethora of new GTK4 terminal emulators, but I just can’t be bothered. Plus none of them support tiling.
Tillix is the way.
Oh, I’m missing out on the latest “xyz dev is a jerk” drama again? Oh well …
I use Kitty, it’s a great terminal emulator that is easily extendable and gives me all the features I like.
I use Gnome Terminal and Mate Terminal on my laptop. Nothing fancy, they just work. They do what I need (which is run a shell), they support tabs, and transparency is just nice to have. I also run Tilda because once in a while I need to enter a quick command without changing desktops.
I like Prompt.
I use Silverblue and a lot of Distrobox containers, which is why I enjoy it that much.
I discovered it through Bazzite.Before that, I used Gnome Console or Black Box, because they’re based on Libadwaita, good looking and very simple, which is enough for my needs.
Konsole kause i’m a kde konformist… kant kontrol it.
