A [[Terminal]] emulator is software which allows interaction with text-mode [[Command Line]] programs. It uses a cell-based or character-based system to display text from the user and program output.
See also: [[ANSI - Text Attributes#Supported]]
# Thoughts
I've used and tested a lot of terminal emulators over the years. Mostly with [[tmux]] and lots of weird fonts and colors and mouse interactions. And everything needs to work smoothly.
My current favorite terminals are, in order:
- [[Wezterm]] (cross-platform)
- [[Foot Term]] ([[Wayland]] on Linux only)
- [[Ptyxis]] (Linux only)
- I have less experience with this one but it seems like a solid alternative
- [[Alacritty]] (cross-platform, but may not work well on [[X11]])
## X11 Redraw Issues
A handful of GPU-accelerated terminals exhibit strange issues redrawing on certain systems using X11 with NVidia drivers. This prevents them from being at all usable on those systems because the screen will have extremely low frame rates or freeze entirely. Any terminal that has exhibited this problem has it mentioned on its dedicated note. The terminal which sent me down the spiral was [[Alacritty]] because I spend a lot of time debugging it and noticed how hostile the devs were to fixing the issue.
Due to my daily driver distro no longer supporting X11 installs I can no longer easily test it, but will update my notes if anyone can confirm the problem is fixed in any of the affected terminals.
# Filed
```base
filters:
or:
- note["app-categories"].contains(link(this))
- file.inFolder("3. Reference/Software/Application/Terminal")
properties:
file.name:
displayName: Name
note.app-categories:
displayName: Categories
note.tags:
displayName: Tags
views:
- type: table
name: Table
order:
- file.name
- app-categories
- supported-oses
- tags
columnSize:
note.app-categories: 261
```
## Libraries
These are the libraries that support many different terminal emulators.
- [[libVTerm]]
- [[libVTE]]
# Unfiled
- Ratty - https://github.com/orhun/ratty
- lo-fi 3D graphics protocol for inline or superimposed 3D models and 3D manipulation of the terminal canvas itself, extremely goofy, very fun
- Xpipe - https://github.com/xpipe-io/xpipe/
- GUI over SSH?
- Pangoterm - https://launchpad.net/pangoterm
- https://leonerds-code.blogspot.com/2011/09/libvtermpangoterm-and-tickit.html
- Unrelated to the paid slopware from 2026
# Reviews / Comparisons
>[!NOTE]
> The information that was previously here was moved into each of the terminal's dedicated notes, where available.
See:
- [[Alacritty]]
- [[Wezterm]]
- [[Contour Terminal]]
- [[Tabby]]
- [[Kitty Term]]
- [[Cool Retro Term]]
- [[Warp]]
## Hyper
[[Hyper Term]] is an [[Electron.js]] app.
X11 Redraw issues: Works fine with *no redraw issues*.
Config: Text only, **no configuration UI**. Which is... odd. For the type of "web technology" and shiny design it really seems like it should have a GUI.
## Gnome Terminal
Yeah, it's fine. It served me well for years.
[[NDN - Necromancers DOS Navigator|Necromancer's DOS Navigator]] does not get along with it and ends up causing text to blink and black on black because it isn't properly using bright background colors, which is what set me on the hunt for an alternative.
It also has this issue where mouse support gets broken, and I have no idea why, then it comes back after a restart. It's very annoying.
**Doesn't support ligatures.**
## Others
I also looked at [[Yaukue]], [[Tilde (terminal)]], [[Tilix]], etc.
One was "looking for maintainers" and written in the [[D]] programming language, the others looked messy or like there were other problems.
But hey they couldn't be worse than [[Alacritty]] before the timed redraws, right? RIGHT??
# Resources
## Videos
A brief and humorous introduction to just about every terminal emulator in use:
```cardlink
url: https://youtu.be/-0UM7ysDLq0
title: "Terminal Emulators: A Descent Into Horror"
description: "Manifesto of someone who fell deep into the Terminal rabbit hole — an Alice in Wonderland-style journey through 20+ terminals, from boring defaults to cyberp..."
host: youtu.be
favicon: https://www.youtube.com/s/desktop/1904e31a/img/favicon_32x32.png
image: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/-0UM7ysDLq0/maxresdefault.jpg
```
# References