4 ms·

Why care about terminal emulators speed? I never cared about anything (let alone terminals) to go above 30 fps. I've heard extra FPS can help in professional ga

Why care about terminal emulators speed? I never cared about anything (let alone terminals) to go above 30 fps. I've heard extra FPS can help in professional gaming but I can't even imagine a case when speed of any existing terminal emulator would be not enough (for what?). Surely its nice to make any app as efficient and responsive as physically possible (as long as this doesn't harm anything) but I still feel curious about what, besides pure perfectionism and competition, actually motivates people in this case.

ihattendorf 3y ago
I recently upgraded from 60 Hz to 160 Hz monitors and just regular mouse movement/scrolling/etc. is so much smoother. Is it necessary? No, but I won't willingly go back to 60 Hz, let alone 30 Hz.
- piyh 3y ago
  30 hz 4k with shitty USB-C dongles is a terrible experience
  - fbdab103 3y ago
    Exactly my work setup at the moment. Amazing how quickly my excitement at the new 4k monitor was quelled.
- andrewstuart2 3y ago
  I've done the same and was pretty dead set on it a while for gaming. And then I got a steam deck which can sometimes dip into the 30s or even 20s and I realized that it does feel jankier but it's definitely an acceptable trade off for something like the mobility of a deck. I'll even crank up graphics on my gaming desktop sometimes now just for eye candy even though it runs closer to 30-45fps.
  - strken 3y ago
    High stable fps is important for multiplayer shooters, and presumably other multiplayer or difficult genres where smoothly tracking objects with your mouse is part of the core gameplay. Every time I upgrade my desktop I notice measurably higher stats.
bogwog 3y ago
> I never cared about anything (let alone terminals) to go above 30 fps. I find that a bit hard to believe. Try setting your monitor's refresh rate to 30hz instead of 60hz, and the difference is huge. Going from 60 to any higher is also a very obvious improvement to the user experience (not power usage). But I agree about the terminal emulator case. I've personally never had an issue with terminal performance on Linux, but someone in the comments mentioned that building AOSP in a slow terminal actually slows the build down due to it taking up an entire core just for rendering the display. Although, I think that's an extreme edge case.
- qwerty456127 3y ago
  Well, yes, the actual monitor is the only exception. Although low refresh rate never looked different than high to me, it somehow felt worse. On CRT monitors I have tried 60 Hz (looks Okay but feels unpleasant), 85 Hz (totally Ok), 100 Hz (no difference from 75 Hz). On LCD displays I tried 60 Hz (perfectly Okay, what I consider the norm), 75 Hz and 100 Hz and both felt no different from 60 Hz - I would never be able to distinguish. I may confuse 75 with 85 and 100 with 120 - I can't remember what exactly that was clearly. So a 75-85 Hz CRT or a 60 Hz LCD feels like what I need. Less is worse, more makes no difference. But this is about the physical refresh rate of the display. What I meant in the previous comment is about the rendering FPS a program would produce.
Izkata 3y ago
For me, keypress latency. I've used xterm for so long that whenever I end up in gnome-terminal, there's just enough delay that it throws me off while typing. And yeah I find it kind of funny this post is by a gnome developer when gnome-terminal is my main example for this.
- qwerty456127 3y ago
  How did you learn to press keys faster than 30 times per second?
  - Izkata 3y ago
    You're thinking bandwidth, not latency. The lag is detectable with a single keystroke.
layer8 3y ago
When you are used to very low latency, everything else feels sluggish and more indirect. The immediacy of 1980s hardware induces a sense of realness that just isn’t quite there with higher latency. It’s like direct manipulation vs. going through a medium.

ihattendorf 3y ago

I recently upgraded from 60 Hz to 160 Hz monitors and just regular mouse movement/scrolling/etc. is so much smoother. Is it necessary? No, but I won't willingly go back to 60 Hz, let alone 30 Hz.

piyh 3y ago
30 hz 4k with shitty USB-C dongles is a terrible experience
- fbdab103 3y ago
  Exactly my work setup at the moment. Amazing how quickly my excitement at the new 4k monitor was quelled.
andrewstuart2 3y ago
I've done the same and was pretty dead set on it a while for gaming. And then I got a steam deck which can sometimes dip into the 30s or even 20s and I realized that it does feel jankier but it's definitely an acceptable trade off for something like the mobility of a deck. I'll even crank up graphics on my gaming desktop sometimes now just for eye candy even though it runs closer to 30-45fps.
- strken 3y ago
  High stable fps is important for multiplayer shooters, and presumably other multiplayer or difficult genres where smoothly tracking objects with your mouse is part of the core gameplay. Every time I upgrade my desktop I notice measurably higher stats.

bogwog 3y ago

> I never cared about anything (let alone terminals) to go above 30 fps. I find that a bit hard to believe. Try setting your monitor's refresh rate to 30hz instead of 60hz, and the difference is huge. Going from 60 to any higher is also a very obvious improvement to the user experience (not power usage). But I agree about the terminal emulator case. I've personally never had an issue with terminal performance on Linux, but someone in the comments mentioned that building AOSP in a slow terminal actually slows the build down due to it taking up an entire core just for rendering the display. Although, I think that's an extreme edge case.

qwerty456127 3y ago
Well, yes, the actual monitor is the only exception. Although low refresh rate never looked different than high to me, it somehow felt worse. On CRT monitors I have tried 60 Hz (looks Okay but feels unpleasant), 85 Hz (totally Ok), 100 Hz (no difference from 75 Hz). On LCD displays I tried 60 Hz (perfectly Okay, what I consider the norm), 75 Hz and 100 Hz and both felt no different from 60 Hz - I would never be able to distinguish. I may confuse 75 with 85 and 100 with 120 - I can't remember what exactly that was clearly. So a 75-85 Hz CRT or a 60 Hz LCD feels like what I need. Less is worse, more makes no difference. But this is about the physical refresh rate of the display. What I meant in the previous comment is about the rendering FPS a program would produce.

Izkata 3y ago

For me, keypress latency. I've used xterm for so long that whenever I end up in gnome-terminal, there's just enough delay that it throws me off while typing. And yeah I find it kind of funny this post is by a gnome developer when gnome-terminal is my main example for this.

qwerty456127 3y ago
How did you learn to press keys faster than 30 times per second?
- Izkata 3y ago
  You're thinking bandwidth, not latency. The lag is detectable with a single keystroke.

layer8 3y ago

When you are used to very low latency, everything else feels sluggish and more indirect. The immediacy of 1980s hardware induces a sense of realness that just isn’t quite there with higher latency. It’s like direct manipulation vs. going through a medium.