this post was submitted on 26 Dec 2024
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 91 points 1 week ago (8 children)

Cool project and... no screenshots? 😭
Every. Damn. Time.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago
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[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 week ago (2 children)

What are the differences between all of these terminals?

[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 week ago (1 children)

If you're occasionally using them, there aren't any.

If you're excessively using them, there are many.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Could you highlight a couple, I'm kinda in between with my terminal usage....

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Sure, I can do that.

  • If you're looking for something lightweight, go for st or urxvt. These are Xorg-only.
  • If you want to configure it via GUI, xfce4-terminal is the middle ground for lightweight and feature-rich. If you are on KDE, konsole would suffice. You can use these on Xorg and Wayland.
  • If you want to work with multiple panes in a single window, terminator is your friend. Used this on Xorg but not sure about its Wayland compatibility.
  • If you want GPU acceleration and more features, kitty and alacritty is out there. Both should work on Xorg and Wayland.
  • If you want something like st but pure Wayland, foot is the best lightweight terminal emulator. My current personal favourite.
[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Fucking legend!

Pretty sure I'm using konsole right now, whatever it is, it came pre-installed on my distro.
Might check out foot and kitty, what I'm using is working right now, but always nice to look into different options.

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[–] atzanteol 26 points 1 week ago (6 children)

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

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

[–] [email protected] 45 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Assuming you had a pretty decent monitor and graphics output in the 90s, it may have been 800x600, but more likely 640x480, and you'd have been using the standard issue bitmap font with no anti-aliasing, blitted to screen using software rendering. Probably in a single colour, too.

Alas, the problem with that is that it doesn't scale. On xterm a 4K monitor, I can watch Vim redrawing the screen, paging through logs is painful. Use Kitty for the same, it's instant, I can flip through tabs and split screens too, and have niceties like anti-aliased fonts and transparency if I want them.

Some people spend a lot of time in the terminal, so I can't fault them for taking the time to make a nice working environment and sharing that work with others.

[–] atzanteol 7 points 1 week ago

"decent" hardware back then ran at 1024x768. I never ran less. And definitely multiple colors. But sure - no anti-aliasing and other features. But also on hardware several orders of magnitude slower.

Though granted I don't have a 4k monitor so maybe there are issues with that...

Some people spend a lot of time in the terminal, so I can’t fault them for taking the time to make a nice working environment and sharing that work with others.

I mean - it's the first thing I open... Which is why I'm surprised others seem to have "performance issues" since I've never seen any.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

Sure, it performed "fine".

But it was sluggish compared to the VGA ttys we were used to.

Now, if we can have something as snappy and at the same time as pretty as Eterm.. 👌

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

Every Linux user has the earliest and lowest specced version of the 4k Lenovo thinkpad from back when 4k on a laptop was impractical and a stupid idea.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Hacker news users seem happy with its performance, so will try tomorrow. Fun with new terminals.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Is there a difference in performance between terminals? Holy hell

Edit: i always used byobu btw

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Checked the build.zig file for ghostty, seems to be for manpage generation. Zig itself doesn't use Haskell though

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)
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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

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

Uses alacritty under the hood, with tabs and tiles!

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It’s awesome to see a project written with Zig!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

They know what they doin. Take off every zig.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

And now that song is back in my head. Thanks man :|

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Isn't the terminal only going to affect performance when it's displayed in stdout? I'd think a program like find / using pipes would send the data under the hood and all that the terminal would deal with would be the output of the entire command.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Thought out choice but disappointing nevertheless:

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

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago (2 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It works natively on Wayland. The UI uses gtk4.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

Hey OP, what is the coolest feature?

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