6 ms·

Another GPU-accelerated terminal emulator is alacritty[0]. Although it has a lot less features than kitty and really is only usable with tmux (or GNU screen, w

Another GPU-accelerated terminal emulator is alacritty[0]. Although it has a lot less features than kitty and really is only usable with tmux (or GNU screen, whatever), it is more or less perfect for people who want their terminal to do just one thing and that one thing pretty fast. Disclaimer: Haven't tried kitty yet and using alacritty for a nearly a year now. [0] https://github.com/jwilm/alacritty https://github.com/jwilm/alacritty

comesee 8y ago
I prefer alacritty because it's less bloated. I always use dvtm
forgotpwd16 8y ago
Alacritty seems far more popular (partly because it is written in Rust) though it is only some months older. But, beyond being GPU-based, it offers nothing more over other terminals. (Actually it offers less being as slim featurewise as st.) For Kitty you can even ignore GPU rendering and still have some good stuff.
hdra 8y ago
I was pretty impressed when I found alacritty a while ago, but I stopped using it as I soon found out that pretty much any speed gain I got from using the terminal is pretty much negated from having to use tmux in order to have any form of window management..
- mjtribue 8y ago
  Could you please provide more details on the speed issues with tmux?
  - jstimpfle 8y ago
    It's, well, slow. Haven't done any measurements, but it's noticeable. To do its work tmux must be basically another terminal emulator, and it seems it isn't the fastest at it. It's still strange, neither a little context switching (tmux is an extra process in the pipeline) nor doing the terminal things should amount to more than a millisecond. I think.
    - tazard 8y ago
      I haven't had any speed issues with tmux. Maybe you have something in your config that's slowing it down?
      - jstimpfle 8y ago
        Different people have different sensitivities. I also don't want to use Gnome Terminal or most other terminals for that matter, because of latency. I also find Windows Cmd window slow. Never done any measurement, but xterm feels right.
      - jamesgeck0 8y ago
        It's extremely noticeable in certain situations on MacOS. Use a full screen terminal with a 12pt font on a 4K display. Split the tmux window into quarters and pull up some logs in each pane. Now use the mouse to click and drag on the center vertical border; quickly resize it from left to right. The border takes about half a second to catch up with the mouse cursor as tmux repeatedly reflows all the text on the screen.
- christoph-heiss 8y ago
  Are you by chance on macOS? This seems to be a general issue on macOS with any terminal emulator, according to [0]. [0] https://github.com/jwilm/alacritty#faq https://github.com/jwilm/alacritty#faq
tmalsburg2 8y ago
I tried alacritty some time ago on Ubuntu and in my tests it was considerably slower than urxvt. In practical use both are fast enough, no perceptible difference, but urxvt is much more mature.
snvzz 8y ago
>There are no benchmarks in which I've found Alacritty to be slower. It's actually very, very slow. https://danluu.com/term-latency/ https://danluu.com/term-latency/
- pitaj 8y ago
  I have a hard time believing this because it doesn't make sense that Hyper, an electron-based terminal emulator, would be faster than Alacritty.
  - snvzz 8y ago
    Don't underestimate how bad latency can get when you're not targeting latency.
btschaegg 8y ago
I also re-tried Alacritty recently, but I had severe issues using it in Sway. If it's one of two tiled windows, it warps the text in the terminal, so it isn't really usable for me.

comesee 8y ago

I prefer alacritty because it's less bloated. I always use dvtm

forgotpwd16 8y ago

Alacritty seems far more popular (partly because it is written in Rust) though it is only some months older. But, beyond being GPU-based, it offers nothing more over other terminals. (Actually it offers less being as slim featurewise as st.) For Kitty you can even ignore GPU rendering and still have some good stuff.

hdra 8y ago

I was pretty impressed when I found alacritty a while ago, but I stopped using it as I soon found out that pretty much any speed gain I got from using the terminal is pretty much negated from having to use tmux in order to have any form of window management..

mjtribue 8y ago
Could you please provide more details on the speed issues with tmux?
- jstimpfle 8y ago
  It's, well, slow. Haven't done any measurements, but it's noticeable. To do its work tmux must be basically another terminal emulator, and it seems it isn't the fastest at it. It's still strange, neither a little context switching (tmux is an extra process in the pipeline) nor doing the terminal things should amount to more than a millisecond. I think.
  - tazard 8y ago
    I haven't had any speed issues with tmux. Maybe you have something in your config that's slowing it down?
    - jstimpfle 8y ago
      Different people have different sensitivities. I also don't want to use Gnome Terminal or most other terminals for that matter, because of latency. I also find Windows Cmd window slow. Never done any measurement, but xterm feels right.
    - jamesgeck0 8y ago
      It's extremely noticeable in certain situations on MacOS. Use a full screen terminal with a 12pt font on a 4K display. Split the tmux window into quarters and pull up some logs in each pane. Now use the mouse to click and drag on the center vertical border; quickly resize it from left to right. The border takes about half a second to catch up with the mouse cursor as tmux repeatedly reflows all the text on the screen.
christoph-heiss 8y ago
Are you by chance on macOS? This seems to be a general issue on macOS with any terminal emulator, according to [0]. [0] https://github.com/jwilm/alacritty#faq https://github.com/jwilm/alacritty#faq

tmalsburg2 8y ago

I tried alacritty some time ago on Ubuntu and in my tests it was considerably slower than urxvt. In practical use both are fast enough, no perceptible difference, but urxvt is much more mature.

snvzz 8y ago

>There are no benchmarks in which I've found Alacritty to be slower. It's actually very, very slow. https://danluu.com/term-latency/ https://danluu.com/term-latency/

pitaj 8y ago
I have a hard time believing this because it doesn't make sense that Hyper, an electron-based terminal emulator, would be faster than Alacritty.
- snvzz 8y ago
  Don't underestimate how bad latency can get when you're not targeting latency.

btschaegg 8y ago

I also re-tried Alacritty recently, but I had severe issues using it in Sway. If it's one of two tiled windows, it warps the text in the terminal, so it isn't really usable for me.