Hi,
I have been using `kitty` for a few years too and I liked it, but realized I
was not really taking advantage of its special features (most of my machines
don't have a dedicated GPU), and `kitty` cannot be set to *not* depend on the
GPU, so in the end it turned out to be slower than other terminals on those
machines. I still liked its other features, like the very efficient `icat`
image protocol, built-in tabs, complete customization options, URL grabber,
*etc.*, but I finally moved to Wayland a few weeks ago and figured it was a
good opportunity to try something else (even though `kitty` is compatible with
Wayland too).
I am now a happy user of [`foot`](https://codeberg.org/dnkl/foot), which
defines itself as a fast, lightweight and minimalistic terminal emulator. I
have not done any measurements myself but there are
[some](https://codeberg.org/dnkl/foot/src/branch/master/doc/benchmark.md) that
look good, and it does feel fast indeed. It is easily configured with a simple
file that covers aesthetics, keybindings, and more advanced features like a
scrollback search and a URL grabber (those latter two are handy because I use a
terminal e-mail client; they're convenient for Remind too because I can search
in its output without using a pager). It also supports sixel, font resizing,
*etc.*, but one feature I really like is it has a server mode, whereby one
process can be launched as a daemon and other windows can then be launched as
clients within the same process, which makes them start even faster and use
less memory because they share the same font cache (with some downsides: if the
server crashes, all clients crash, or if one window is very busy, this may
impact others). I typically autolaunch the daemon when I start Sway, and then
use mostly clients.
I have also been using `st` a little and keep it as a fallback terminal just in
case, since it's very lightweight, but I didn't spend much time configuring it.
On some machines still using Xorg, I also use `urxvt`, which turned out to be
quite fast as well and is still actively maintained even if it's an oldie, with
a server/client mode too, and it is quite customizable (extensions for URL
grabbing, tabs, changing font size dynamically, fake transparency for those low
spec machines that can't use a compositor).
Terminal emulators are really a matter of personal taste anyway, but it's cool
that we have so many options.
M
On 2022-09-23 08:25 Jochen Sprickerhof via Remind-fans
<[email protected]> wrote:
> Hi Paul,
>
> * Paul M. Foster via Remind-fans <[email protected]>
> [2022-09-22 23:14]:
>> For what it's worth, I run i3, and recently did a survey of the file
>> sizes of various terminal emulators.
>>
>> xfce4-terminal: 387440 bytes terminology: 556184 bytes qterminal
>> (LXQt): 403600 bytes kitty: 14568 bytes
>
> Note that kitty is written in Python so this table is not really
> meaningful. But then again you are also missing the shared libraries
> loaded by the other variants. To give you some idea of the file size
> (not sure if one can draw any conclusion out of it), I propose apt
> install on a minimal Debian unstable chroot:
>
> $ apt install --no-install-recommends xfce4-terminal | grep
> "additional disk space" After this operation, 179 MB of additional
> disk space will be used.
>
> xfce4-terminal 179 MB terminology 300 MB qterminal 272 MB kitty 63.8
> MB xterm 15.8 MB stterm 15.6 MB
>
> with stterm being https://st.suckless.org/.
>
> I would rather recommend looking at the memory usage when running the
> executable and for my Debian unstable test system I see (in top -e
> m):
>
> VIRT RES SHR kitty 930.6m 103.3m 62.9m xterm 21.3m 11.0m
> 6.1m stterm 15.5m 8.5m 5.6m
>
> I also recommend:
>
> https://lwn.net/Articles/749992/ https://lwn.net/Articles/751763/
>
> Note that stterm gained some speed improvements in the meantime and
> you can also hand tune it (if you really need) as I wrote down here:
>
> https://lwn.net/Articles/752894/
>
> Cheers Jochen
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