So, Konsole shipped by default with KDE Plasma, my current Desktop Environment. While I don’t have a problem with it, I am interested in what other people are using, because there very likely is something better out there.
Specifically I’ve seen talk of Kitty and Alacritty, although I’ve also read that the dev of Kitty is allegedly kind of a jerk, so I am specifically interested in how Konsole matches up to Alacritty in your experience, but other suggestions and general terminal emulator discussion are also welcome!
I don’t get the fixation people have with terminals. I don’t think I’ve ever used one in Linux that made me think “you know, I need to install a better terminal emulator”. So I just use what comes with my DE.
I am on EndeavourOS and install packages via the command line and on top of that I primarily use Neovim, so I spend a decent amount of time in the terminal
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Understandable and fair. I enjoy trying different stuff though. I’m not saying other people need to switch to another terminal emulator, I’m just here to ask what everyone else is using and then try it out myself, for fun :3
Edit: To add onto that, if I didn’t wanna try new stuff, I’d still be on Windows. I never had any major problems with it until I discovered the things Linux does better, and so if I just went with what seems fine I’d still be using Windows now. There’s not an inherent problem with that, of course, but overall the switch has benefited me. I like trying new things, you know?
I get that, but even when I worked as a coder using vim I didn’t care. What makes, let’s say, Gnome terminal a bad terminal?
There are two kinds of powerusers, and they DO NOT understand each other one bit.
The first, like you, just wants to get shit done and want to avoid the friction of choosing/installing/configuring their tools. GNOME, Chromium, and VSCode will do just fine.
The second, like me, wants to get shit done as well, but has a strong need for a very specific workflow. I’ll spend half an hour to get a toolchain working on nvim instead of using a pre-baked VSCode plugin. Not because VSCode is bad, but because I have a very (!) specific workflow and associated muscle memory and anything else distracts and unsettles me.
Some of the best engineers I know fall into either category, neither way is superior it’s just how brains are wired.
Anyway I use Kitty because it allows me to split tabs into windows (not windows into tabs! ew!), has low latency with high throughput thanks to GPU rendering, and a low memory footprint.
Oh that made a ton of sense! I don’t customize as much because I’m a completionist and would waste a whole week on it and not even change much from defaults anyway.
I also checked kitty and terminator and I can see the appeal. I’m used to opening separate windows and tile them using window manager commands to get a similar effect.
Thanks for your response, that was an eye opener!
My counterpoint is terminator. The logger plugin saved my ass a few times, it remembers the commands I ran and what their output was so I don’t have to.
I guess it depends on if you’re willing to take advantage of the extra features, or just want to do as little CLI as possible
Nowadays I don’t use the CLI much. But back in the day I used vim professionally and still didn’t care. Maybe because I ran everything from within vim?
Providing it has tabs, I’ll use it.
I like customizing mine and switch DEs often, and use multiple across different devices. It’s easier to find one good terminal that can share a config and work well on each device and DE.