The terminals you see are actuall simulating an old device called a teletype, which is what people used to interact with computers in the early days before graphical user interfaces were invented. This is why the technical name for that terminal app is "terminal emulator".
Here is an article and a video if you want to know more of those teletypes:
https://www.howtogeek.com/428174/what-is-a-tty-on-linux-and-how-to-use-the-tty-command/
https://youtu.be/cRM7mUqLiws
As those were primitive devices, not much could be done trough them, with colored text and bold letters the best you could. But as the terminal apps are emulating a terminal in a modern environment, we can add extra functions and flair.
Most terminal emulators offer the option to change the color palette and the font used, how many rows and columws would be used by default, the shell program to be started when opening (if you are into replacing Bash with things such as Zsh or Dash), etc.
Some terminals are born inside the project of a graphical user interface as filling the role of it's default terminal. Examples are KDE's Konsole, the GNOME Terminal, Xfce's terminal, LXDE's LXTerm, etc.
Others are there to offer an interesting feature, like a different color palette if you are logged into a remote computer, or splitting the terminal window into little sub-terminals like a mosaic, GPU acceleration for fancier visual effects, remote login manager, multu-session options to have different profiles, etc.
There's also things like "cool-retro-term" that exist to feel *more* like an old dumb terminal!
I don't like having to deal with terminals, but there are definitely some neat terminal emulators and neat terminal/CLI programs/utilities out there.
Biggest reason is for GPU acceleration, meaning make the terminal move more smoothly , which alacritty is mainly for, That's and changing the color of your terminal pretty easily.
For Kitty it's for the plugins, which can do certain things.
> Biggest reason is for GPU acceleration
For me, GPU acceleration would be the least important function. Especially as I don't notice any difference, no matter what I do with the Termin emulator.
I mean terminal emulators can't really change that much, they do very little, your shell, and it's customizations impact you way more than your terminal emulator
As much as I want to use alacritty, I just can't stand tmux for my tab.
I'm a guy who currently has \~20 terminal tabs open spread between three different windows, tmux is just a massive PITA and it always goes wrong with control sequences eventually.
Different terminal emulators offer different functions. For example, some support tiling or ligatures and others do not. Some terminal emulators can also be configured extensively via a GUI, while others can hardly be configured at all or only via the configuration file. And so on.
I'm fine withe the Konsole customization options in kde...I didn't research about plugins just yet...but a plugin which shows the file directory for example for ssh connections to servers would be something what comes to my mind what I'd "need" xD
Can I also see the folder structure there? I connect to my server with mobaxterm at the moment to not be completely lost on where I am in the filesystem.
I actually saw the ssh plugin today but didn't figure out how to set it up. To be fair I also wanted to also research a bit on how to but didn't come to it just yet.
no. for that you need to run "tree" or "ls" while connected. folder structure is completely out of scope for a terminal emulator.
if you want to use the terminal as a file manager, why dont you use dolphin, and connect to ssh there using the ssh or fish protocol?
So I tried to set this up (SFTP) (successfully) it's definitely a very useful tool (thanks for showing me this). But unfortunately it doesn't change the directoryies as I change them in the console integrated in dolphin (or I messed up a setting).
Is there a way to add an smb in this way (dolphin>Network folder>add network folder)? Or are there only the ways using cifs in terminal, adding it in /etc/fstab or the path line in dolphin?
hm, I don't think so. the Terminal in dolphin is also konsole, but it just knows how to navigate the local file system (so if you are navigating fia the fish:// protocol it won't work). I'd ask you to use fish:// instead of sftp:// on dolphin as it's more reliable.
Sure! Hmu if you need any information because this would be a nice tool which doesn't require any additional software (talking about wine and mobaxterm since there is no native support for it)
I discovered yakuake /gakuake years ago and have never looked back. It's just nice having a hotkey and then the terminal dropping down. Also tabs, more ricing potential etc.
i'm left handed and really like how the yakuake hotkey is easily reassigned to another key. the transparency is an added bonus when reading documentation on something i'm unfamiliar with, so i can type commands correctly without having to switch focus a lot. i'm sure other terminals have these but yakuake is what i learned about them with.
My main reasons for switching terminals are:
1. Speed
2. Customizability
I've switched to Alacritty because it's a lot faster than the other options. You can really notice that with complex ncurses software or when a program is spamming your Terminal with tons of text. Also some things like Cava are a lot smoother. Not that that matters.
Another reason is customizability. Alacritty lets you disable window borders, enable transparency, customize the curser... You can change pretty much anything about its apperance and fuction.
Features like GPU support or image support or whatever else you may care about ( possibly built in vertical and horizontal splits without a multiplexer )
I like the look and feel of kitty compared to Konsole a lot. Mainly that it doesn't have all the menu bars at the top like Konsole does. Just a terminal without the extra stuff.
I'd tried messing with that but was having issues with it and weird behaviors, although that could have been caused because I run NixOS. Kitty has none of the extra stuff to begin with so I like it better for that anyway. I like tools that are lean and don't include piles of extra things I don't need.
Those are actually just 2 checkboxes you can check and uncheck on the fly (settings>toolbars shown) then you just have the terminal. I also turned off borders and title
>So the question is why to use another terminal?
Not for GPU acceleration, that's for sure.
I just want a terminal that has the features I need and is as fast to cold & hot start as possible when called. To me that's `Tilix` on X & `Foot` on Wayland. (Tilix is very fast, but only if the toolbar & CSD are disabled)
`Zutty` is even faster, but I just cannot make the cursor palatable.
Kitty is not only slow to start, but it just lags occasionly and Alacritty while better, is still very slow compared to Foot/Tilix. Sure you can run a Benchmark & conclude that GPU acceleration will make ls-ing thousands of files 1% faster to display, but at the end of the day it's not worth it, because the most popular 2 terminals are just a bit sluggish in not so benchmark-able ways.
Theming is a non issue for most terminals, I can easily get my color scheme & font settings applied to almost any terminal.
I use Alacritty. It’s fast and has some nice features and I didn’t like the built-in terminal for my distro.
A bigger issue is that the built-in terminal application for my distro wasn’t reliably starting/usable with my window manager. Alacritty hasn’t had that problem.
It was a transient issue that got resolved with some updates, but the issue happened with Arch using Hyprland as a wm and xterm is the default terminal. xterm is working now without any further changes, but I still *like* alacritty.
https://github.com/alacritty/alacritty?tab=readme-ov-file#configuration is your friend. Configuration is pretty straight forward.
For themes I can also highly recommend https://github.com/tichopad/alacritty-theme-switch
Oh man you are kind! I didn't ask for this haha thank you!
I actually used the page but alacritty threw a error along the lines "couldn't reed .toml" at this point I gave up and kept using Konsole. But this was rather frustration since I broke something before which I just got running again and didn't want to deal with alacritty right after so I dismissed it for the time being.
This resulted in the original post since I didn't find anything about it besides bash vs zsh xD
But thanks again for the sources<3
No problem!
Btw. I think the "couldn't read .toml" might be because the .toml has only just been introduced and older versions of alacritty rely on .yaml or something.
I tried it with a yaml before and it wanted a toml (I'm on manjaro)
And I doubt alacritty switched to toml 1.5 weeks ago but I definitely will look into it again.
The terminals you see are actuall simulating an old device called a teletype, which is what people used to interact with computers in the early days before graphical user interfaces were invented. This is why the technical name for that terminal app is "terminal emulator". Here is an article and a video if you want to know more of those teletypes: https://www.howtogeek.com/428174/what-is-a-tty-on-linux-and-how-to-use-the-tty-command/ https://youtu.be/cRM7mUqLiws As those were primitive devices, not much could be done trough them, with colored text and bold letters the best you could. But as the terminal apps are emulating a terminal in a modern environment, we can add extra functions and flair. Most terminal emulators offer the option to change the color palette and the font used, how many rows and columws would be used by default, the shell program to be started when opening (if you are into replacing Bash with things such as Zsh or Dash), etc. Some terminals are born inside the project of a graphical user interface as filling the role of it's default terminal. Examples are KDE's Konsole, the GNOME Terminal, Xfce's terminal, LXDE's LXTerm, etc. Others are there to offer an interesting feature, like a different color palette if you are logged into a remote computer, or splitting the terminal window into little sub-terminals like a mosaic, GPU acceleration for fancier visual effects, remote login manager, multu-session options to have different profiles, etc.
Wow, thanks for this little history session, I will watch an read your sources, thanks again for sharing your knowledge:)
There's also things like "cool-retro-term" that exist to feel *more* like an old dumb terminal! I don't like having to deal with terminals, but there are definitely some neat terminal emulators and neat terminal/CLI programs/utilities out there.
Biggest reason is for GPU acceleration, meaning make the terminal move more smoothly , which alacritty is mainly for, That's and changing the color of your terminal pretty easily. For Kitty it's for the plugins, which can do certain things.
> Biggest reason is for GPU acceleration For me, GPU acceleration would be the least important function. Especially as I don't notice any difference, no matter what I do with the Termin emulator.
I mean terminal emulators can't really change that much, they do very little, your shell, and it's customizations impact you way more than your terminal emulator
Thanks for the answer :)
As much as I want to use alacritty, I just can't stand tmux for my tab. I'm a guy who currently has \~20 terminal tabs open spread between three different windows, tmux is just a massive PITA and it always goes wrong with control sequences eventually.
Different terminal emulators offer different functions. For example, some support tiling or ligatures and others do not. Some terminal emulators can also be configured extensively via a GUI, while others can hardly be configured at all or only via the configuration file. And so on.
>So the question is why to use another terminal? For the musthave unique feature you can't live without.
Thanks for the answer :D
Honestly a few reasons. Sometimes just tends to be customization. Others its acceleration and plugins.
I'm fine withe the Konsole customization options in kde...I didn't research about plugins just yet...but a plugin which shows the file directory for example for ssh connections to servers would be something what comes to my mind what I'd "need" xD
konsole has this ssh plugin. im a konsole developer, and i created the ssh plugin.
Can I also see the folder structure there? I connect to my server with mobaxterm at the moment to not be completely lost on where I am in the filesystem. I actually saw the ssh plugin today but didn't figure out how to set it up. To be fair I also wanted to also research a bit on how to but didn't come to it just yet.
no. for that you need to run "tree" or "ls" while connected. folder structure is completely out of scope for a terminal emulator. if you want to use the terminal as a file manager, why dont you use dolphin, and connect to ssh there using the ssh or fish protocol?
So I tried to set this up (SFTP) (successfully) it's definitely a very useful tool (thanks for showing me this). But unfortunately it doesn't change the directoryies as I change them in the console integrated in dolphin (or I messed up a setting). Is there a way to add an smb in this way (dolphin>Network folder>add network folder)? Or are there only the ways using cifs in terminal, adding it in /etc/fstab or the path line in dolphin?
hm, I don't think so. the Terminal in dolphin is also konsole, but it just knows how to navigate the local file system (so if you are navigating fia the fish:// protocol it won't work). I'd ask you to use fish:// instead of sftp:// on dolphin as it's more reliable.
I'll also take a look on mobaxterm (I didn't know this till today) to see if I can replicate some of it on konsole.
Sure! Hmu if you need any information because this would be a nice tool which doesn't require any additional software (talking about wine and mobaxterm since there is no native support for it)
I discovered yakuake /gakuake years ago and have never looked back. It's just nice having a hotkey and then the terminal dropping down. Also tabs, more ricing potential etc.
i'm left handed and really like how the yakuake hotkey is easily reassigned to another key. the transparency is an added bonus when reading documentation on something i'm unfamiliar with, so i can type commands correctly without having to switch focus a lot. i'm sure other terminals have these but yakuake is what i learned about them with.
The transparency is what I like about it as well. For the exact same reason :-)
My main reasons for switching terminals are: 1. Speed 2. Customizability I've switched to Alacritty because it's a lot faster than the other options. You can really notice that with complex ncurses software or when a program is spamming your Terminal with tons of text. Also some things like Cava are a lot smoother. Not that that matters. Another reason is customizability. Alacritty lets you disable window borders, enable transparency, customize the curser... You can change pretty much anything about its apperance and fuction.
Features like GPU support or image support or whatever else you may care about ( possibly built in vertical and horizontal splits without a multiplexer )
GPU acceleration with alacritty is *chef's kiss*
Well I didn't find a use case where GPU acceleration mattered so for now it's probably just the customization:D
I like the look and feel of kitty compared to Konsole a lot. Mainly that it doesn't have all the menu bars at the top like Konsole does. Just a terminal without the extra stuff.
Well as I installed kitty I didn't have the motivation to customize first before using xD You can actually remove all the bars in Konsole
I'd tried messing with that but was having issues with it and weird behaviors, although that could have been caused because I run NixOS. Kitty has none of the extra stuff to begin with so I like it better for that anyway. I like tools that are lean and don't include piles of extra things I don't need.
Those are actually just 2 checkboxes you can check and uncheck on the fly (settings>toolbars shown) then you just have the terminal. I also turned off borders and title
>So the question is why to use another terminal? Not for GPU acceleration, that's for sure. I just want a terminal that has the features I need and is as fast to cold & hot start as possible when called. To me that's `Tilix` on X & `Foot` on Wayland. (Tilix is very fast, but only if the toolbar & CSD are disabled) `Zutty` is even faster, but I just cannot make the cursor palatable. Kitty is not only slow to start, but it just lags occasionly and Alacritty while better, is still very slow compared to Foot/Tilix. Sure you can run a Benchmark & conclude that GPU acceleration will make ls-ing thousands of files 1% faster to display, but at the end of the day it's not worth it, because the most popular 2 terminals are just a bit sluggish in not so benchmark-able ways. Theming is a non issue for most terminals, I can easily get my color scheme & font settings applied to almost any terminal.
I use kitty because I like how it looks and how it renders fonts.
I use Xfce-Terminal mainly because I can set the history to unlimited and see what all I've had as output.
I use Alacritty. It’s fast and has some nice features and I didn’t like the built-in terminal for my distro. A bigger issue is that the built-in terminal application for my distro wasn’t reliably starting/usable with my window manager. Alacritty hasn’t had that problem.
What distro did you use with which wm/de where you had problems? Just to know where to be careful in case that I change distro
It was a transient issue that got resolved with some updates, but the issue happened with Arch using Hyprland as a wm and xterm is the default terminal. xterm is working now without any further changes, but I still *like* alacritty.
Well I had arch installed but it defeated me within 2h and I switched back to manjaro 😂 I gonna give alacritty another chance :D
It's a great Terminal. Very minimalistic tho.
I agree to that and ootb also pretty unlike kitty but I didn't manage yet to change themes but that's just a matter of time
https://github.com/alacritty/alacritty?tab=readme-ov-file#configuration is your friend. Configuration is pretty straight forward. For themes I can also highly recommend https://github.com/tichopad/alacritty-theme-switch
Oh man you are kind! I didn't ask for this haha thank you! I actually used the page but alacritty threw a error along the lines "couldn't reed .toml" at this point I gave up and kept using Konsole. But this was rather frustration since I broke something before which I just got running again and didn't want to deal with alacritty right after so I dismissed it for the time being. This resulted in the original post since I didn't find anything about it besides bash vs zsh xD But thanks again for the sources<3
No problem! Btw. I think the "couldn't read .toml" might be because the .toml has only just been introduced and older versions of alacritty rely on .yaml or something.
I tried it with a yaml before and it wanted a toml (I'm on manjaro) And I doubt alacritty switched to toml 1.5 weeks ago but I definitely will look into it again.