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Alacritty – A fast, cross-platform, OpenGL terminal emulator

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Re: Alacritty – A fast, cross-platform, OpenGL terminal emulator

#43
post #4

i do prefer kitty[0] if i want a modern terminal emulator [0] https://github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty

My understanding is that kitty has an automatic (opt-out) update feature [0][1]. I don't really like the idea of a terminal doing that.

However I like the fact that kitty developer(s) actively improved the state of the terminal emulation with their new keyboard and graphic protocols [2].

[0] https://github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty/issues/2481

[1] https://github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty/pull/3544

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40378357

Re: Alacritty – A fast, cross-platform, OpenGL terminal emulator

#44
post #8

This project looks very cool. Worth noting however that it doesn’t have tabs.

It has tabs on macOS at least, but it f alls in the classic pitfall of cross platform applications where they made the mistake of not using the OS to resolve keystrokes.

So my keyboard layout doesn't work with the app at all. I've identified the issues but making a pull request for it and testing it all is a bit of work I haven't gotten round to yet.

Re: Alacritty – A fast, cross-platform, OpenGL terminal emulator

#45

I tried it for a few years a while back on macOS but it somehow felt off, I don't remember why, something to do with mouse selection. I went back to iTerm2 and that's that, you couldn't view images with feh and similar tools in macOS terminals for some reason so I had no reason to stay. Out of interest, why would I want anything faster than iTerm2 anyway? Never felt that my terminal is slow.

The main problem with iTerm2 is that the configuration is not via plain text and so it's impossible to keep track of your config in git. (I did try the dynamic profiles feature for a couples of years, but it's not the same). I use alacritty now, but I'm sure wezterm etc are also great.

Re: Alacritty – A fast, cross-platform, OpenGL terminal emulator

#47
post #14

Alacritty, foot, wezterm, kitty form this block of "nextgen" terminal emulators. I do find them difficult to differentiate. I personally use foot as my daily driver, but that is just because alacritty happened to have some issues with nvidia drivers (bleh). But I chalk that up to nvidia, not alacritty.

Foot is Linux only and lightweight, take it as a Wayland version of Xterm with good defaults and almost no emulation options. The rest works in all major OS. Alacrity is all about GPU rendering speed at the cost of everything else (at some point it did not have scrollbars/history). Kitty and Wezterm are packed with features and more difficult to differentiate. They are all good though.

Re: Alacritty – A fast, cross-platform, OpenGL terminal emulator

#48
post #46

At the risk of missing something completely obvious: where's the "emulator" part in it? What is it emulating? It looks like a terminal (no emulator) to me. Not trolling, just trying to learn.

Like all similar software, it's emulating a physical terminal: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_terminal.

Re: Alacritty – A fast, cross-platform, OpenGL terminal emulator

#49
post #39

I tried it for a few years a while back on macOS but it somehow felt off, I don't remember why, something to do with mouse selection. I went back to iTerm2 and that's that, you couldn't view images with feh and similar tools in macOS terminals for some reason so I had no reason to stay. Out of interest, why would I want anything faster than iTerm2 anyway? Never felt that my terminal is slow.

Input and rendering latency are much better in Alacritty than iTerm. If you spend a lot of time editing large files in Vim it's certainly noticeable.

I've had the same issue with iTerm using neovim, rendering latency was just too much iTerm. However instead of Alacrity I've opted to use wezterm as it's nice to use Lua for both neovim and my terminal config.

Re: Alacritty – A fast, cross-platform, OpenGL terminal emulator

#50
post #42

What problem is having a "fast" terminal solving? I've been using urxvt for years and have never really found it to be slow. Where might I notice a difference with these "modern" "GPU-accelerated" terminals?

I only really notice it when accidentally catting a really large file. Although I prefer kitty, any of these modern terminal emulators just rip through megabytes of text in less than a second, while in older ones you have to wait for half a minute or just sigkill them.
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