Linux

For those that are, for some reason, incredulous of having more performant software (???), here's a simple program to demonstrate the point:

use std::{
    fs::File,
    io::{BufWriter, Write},
};

fn main() {
    let buf = File::create("/dev/stdout").unwrap();
    let mut w = BufWriter::new(buf);
    let mut i = 0;

    while i <= 100000 {
        writeln!(&mut w, "{}", i).unwrap();
        i += 1;
    }
}

It simply prints the numbers 0-100000 to the screen. Compile it (rustc path-to-file). Run it in a non-accelerated terminal with time ./path-to-bin. Now time that same binary in a terminal emulator with GPU-acceleration.

The difference becomes more apparent with more text. Now, imagine needing to use something like find on a large set of files. Doing this on a non-accelerated terminal is literally slower.

It's fine if you don't need a GPU-accelerated terminal, but having acceleration is genuinely useful and a noticeable quality-of-life improvement if you do anything more than just basic CLI usage.

warning: this is a giant rant lol

Before the rest of my comment, let me be clear, I think this terminal is good, and i have no problems with it. My problem is with the hype.

I simply don't understand the hype whatsoever. First of all, it's not even faster than my current terminal. especially when running cat /dev/random for whatever reason

For the test i ran this rust program i saw in a comment thread somewhere

use std::{
    fs::File,
    io::{BufWriter, Write},
};

fn main() {
    let buf = File::create("/dev/stdout").unwrap();
    let mut w = BufWriter::new(buf);
    let mut i = 0;

    while i <= 100000 {
        writeln!(&mut w, "{}", i).unwrap();
        i += 1;
    }
}

compile with rustc to test yourself.

running the binary with hyperfine, i get ~35ms on my current terminal (foot), and ~40ms on ghostty.

The terminal window sizes about the same size, in fact, there were 3 extra lines in foot so it was technically handicapped.

Next is the whole "native ui thing", which sure, if you use gnome, or mac is fine i guess, but what about kde where qt is used. And for me i simply hate title bars so i turned it off immediately and now it looks better.

I do think the tabs are cool, not much to say about that, I wouldn't use them, but for those who do, pretty cool.

I have a similar opinion with the panes, personally i think if you want panes, just use a tiling window manager, or tmux or something, but i also dont really have a problem with this (tmux can be annoying).

If I've missed anything let me know, because I really dont get it.

It's ridiculous how much time people are spending performance optimizing terminals.

xterm on a 120MHz Pentium on X11 in the 90s performed "fine".

Looked at it, interesting, no package, installed cosmic-term instead

Uses alacritty under the hood, with tabs and tiles!

Looking at ghostty-git in AUR, zig is built on haskell? With 221 haskell libraries.

And what does it need pandoc-cli and hslua-cli for?

Thought out choice but disappointing nevertheless:

My stance for now is that Ghostty will not support sixels.

• https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty/discussions/2496

Hm... I don't see it stating anything about wayland, but since it says "native" in some many places, I need to assume it won't use Xwayland, unless specifically told to.

Right? Anyone to confirm?