The BEST Terminal Emulator. Period.

Today I talk about my time with Alacritty and why I think it's the best terminal emulator you can use.
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==== Referenced ====
Rofi Changer script - • Change Alacritty Theme... (requires my alacritty config)
github.com/alacritty/alacritty
#alacritty #linux #thelinuxcast

[@TheLinuxCast]

If you want to see more Linux content from me, follow me on Twitter twitter.com/thelinuxcast

[@kevinklement2621]

The Alacritty dev refuses to allow Ctrl-C to be mapped to copy-on-selection-or-interrupt-otherwise for ridiculous paternalistic reasons. It also doesn't support ligatures. Kitty is unquestionably better than Alacritty IMHO, but I've been using wezterm which is my current favorite. Really nice font configuration (in lua), built in multiplexing and the ultra cool gpu accelerated parallax scrolling.

[@rsmith31416]

At least based on the threads dealing with the Ctrl-C issue, I believe it is possible to add key-bindings yourself => { key: C, mods: Control, action: Copy }. Alacritty doesn't support ligatures because it causes a decrease in performance. If someone was to implement ligatures without that performance hit, the main developer doesn't seem to have any objection to add that feature.

[@eugenereim456]

+1 for kitty, best feature rich emulator. It's even have it's own image rendering backend.

[@wacesferpit]

+1 for wezterm, it is amazing for customization, supports more features than kitty, and in my experience is better at rendering than either (supports ligatures, and renders more unicode characters better than kitty)

[@thingsiplay]

+1 for kitty, high quality image support in terminal and mod+g also rules. Best terminal emulator and I used Alacritty for a while before switching.

[@ander1296]

+1 for wezterm. It's great and has good customization. I like kitty a lot, but the developer is arrogant as f. Every time I was looking for something that kitty doesn't have I would find an issue of someone asking the same thing and the developer being a jerk.

[@MrCradleman]

Wezterm is the best. Lua config - you can do basically everything. Ligatures, build-in image viewer, build-in multiplexer, build-in copy mode(you can select and copy text without mouse), tabs and splits. Alacritty has no chances.

[@Kritiqual]

I'm using kitty and it's config is based on python (which I don't like). And I have people suggest this terminal on reddit and even see this. I installed it and loved it!

[@BennyPowers]

has decent rtl, too

[@dkkogmaw1311]

rxvt on top who needs your fancy bloat

[@colorgasm]

awesome! how can we get the wm & alacritty theme that you have at 2:31 ? looks so good

[@lovebaranus9800]

>> no Ligature support. >> Extremely poor clipboard support. >> No tabs and No split panels, this is probably the worst one, since those are essential for anyone who does anything more complex than some basic file management operations. >> No extension support of any kind, this is important because it prevents super cool things to be posible, like complete ssh integration, image rendering whitout depending on X11, complete shell integration with bash, zsh and fish (even over ssh), etc. >> Absolutely no intentions for ANY of the above to become a thing, to the point of reacting in unprofessional ways to non-malicious github Issues relative to the inclusion of said features. Yeah, no. It's excellent for new users to the terminal, but if you want to be a software dev, sysadmin, or other related jobs, you're going to need something much more capable, like *kitty* , which has all of the above, and has ambition for wayyy more.

[@rsmith31416]

It is really a matter of expectations. Alacritty's developers don't intend to implement every feature under the sun and that's a really good thing. It might annoy users that are more accustomed to other terminal emulators, however, users are very eager to demand their favorite feature, but they're not maintaining that feature for the next 5 or 10 years. Additionally, some of the features your mentioned are extremely niche. I can understand people want ligatures, but shell integration, ssh integration, image rendering without X11 is a bridge too far.

[@lovebaranus9800]

​@@rsmith31416 To clarify, despite the negative connotation of my comment, i actually really like alacritty and i think is very powerful, infinitely better choice than any DE terminal, period. And i also agree with you respecting the whole plugin system thing, certainly it's actually not necessary, even if it is a incredibly powerful addition, when designing a terminal with minimalism in mind, it's not something to have in mind. With that being clarified, The very limited clipboard support, as well as no tabs and no split panels is a very huge problem, since those things are massive productivity boosters, that also don't actually clash with the minimalist design at all. A great terminal emulator that is also very underlooked, is *wezterm* . It's essentially alacritty, but better. having all of it's mayor features + tabs and split panels + more advanced clipboard control (even though not as powerful as kitty, but still good) + advanced ligature support.

[@John7No]

@@rsmith31416 well the first 3 are not every feature under the sun. Are very common and frequently asked features. Tabs/splits are very essential imho.

[@N0zer0]

Also, pretty bloated, consumes 100+ MB memory for a single terminal window.

[@rsmith31416]

​@@lovebaranus9800 I have to admit it never occurred to me that tabs, splits or clipboard support was an issue in Alacritty since I have been using tmux for years now, and obviously, a terminal multiplexer with session/workspace capabilities is better equipped to provide the features you mentioned before. Maybe you could give tmux (or other terminal multiplexer) a try. Having said that, if wezterm is a better fit for you, then that's great.

[@MrNeilypops]

Excellent presentation and summation as per usual.Thanks.

[@JakeLinux]

I used alacrity for a long time, then I found kitty and life got a little better. I like alacrity but kitty is better in my personal opinion.

[@zoinkshaggy]

Great video. I was using alacritty for quite a while. I recently switched to kitty. I think I will stick with kitty for the time being. I still use alacritty for certain tasks.

[@HeCodes2Much]

hey Matt what fetch tool is that I like the color dots on it

[@oalfodr]

Is there a reason for not being consistent when writing any kind of config or peace of code?

[@lieftheshinigami]

When I first got into tiling window managers and ricing, I tried both Alacrity and Kitty on separate installs. I ended up with Kitty as my choice of terminal emulator. The one thing that bothered me is the way Kitty handles SSH. Not a deal-breaker by any means, because i just set up an alias for Kitty to load up the ssh kitten, and all is well. I picked Kitty over Alacritty because of it's built-in image plugin to be honest (at least at first) and I've gotten comfortable with Kitty, so I just stick with it at this point.

[@kendarr]

And it allows multible tabs

[@lieftheshinigami]

@@kendarr That's true, however, I typically don't use tabs unless I'm running a floating window manager, so this isn't a deal-breaker for me. otherwise, I just use the tiling window manager's tabbed or stacking layout (in the case of i3) it is a great feature to have though.

[@kendarr]

@eelaroune why do people call it bloat? It comes with many features, it's not like it takes a lot of space in disk or gets in the way,you don't use the image background function? Just don't use it lol

[@lieftheshinigami]

@eelaroune oh well. I have plenty of system resources to handle "bloat". It's not like it takes gigs of ram to run it or anything. It's like systems are built to handle larger, more featured apps or something like that... I don't get the bloat argument and never will because if it has extra features that take slightly more resources than I'd say it's worth it.

[@kendarr]

@@lieftheshinigami I've used I3 and AWM for a while, but even there I really liked the tabs, it just generally takes less space in my view

[@esra_erimez]

And, we love "The Linux Cast"

[@dubbeltumme]

Get dylan araps (black belt ricer, pywall and distro creator) tool "paleta". It lets you change terminal color scheme on the fly in all open terminals. You can also redirect the output of paleta to a file, And then "cat" that file to apply a theme in the current terminal. It is very fast and works with ALL terminal emulators. One thing I found annoying with alacritty was that even if it have a way to start it in a server/client mode (you save a lot of RAM doing that), it meant that i had to have the same font in all terminals, because the config is connected like it is. That is the reason i didn't include alacritty in i3term.

[@SusanAmberBruce]

Hi thanks for your video, can I use Alacritty as a serial terminal, I want a terminal that I can easily switch to emulate a VT100 for a Z80 serial input over RS323

[@blicero10979]

ok wow. scratch pads... awesome. never knew you could do that ... looks like my plan for tomorrow is set. great video. thanks!

[@medamine3142]

hey just asking, what theme are you using and what linux distro is this, i love this theme; thanx

[@TheLinuxCast]

If you're talking about the one at the beginning, then it's Moonfly and the distro is Fedora.

[@thingsiplay]

I used Alacritty, but now switched to Kitty. Kitty has some functionalities that I missed in Alacritty and was the reason I looked around and found Kitty. Edit: I prefer having the documentation in the config file. And Kitty excels there. It's fantastic. If you don't want documentation in config, then just use a command to remove comments from the file.

[@kendarr]

Plus you can have tabs, I'm the only one who uses tabs a lot?

[@JM-sn5eb]

@@kendarr I use tabs all the time. Kitty has them by default or should I do something?

[@kendarr]

@@JM-sn5eb kitty have tabs by default :)

[@maroueneayoub1133]

hey matt can you make a step by step video on how you did your polybar and i3wm configuration, it seems fantastic !

[@TheLinuxCast]

Here's a bit of it. kzbin.info/www/bejne/oZWcmGttrc-raas It doesn't really cover the script that I show in this video, that will come later once I've actually finished the script.

[@Galakyllz]

I would love a video about Kitty and some of the most popular kittens. Thanks for your work, btw.

[@nickglazzard2385]

I’ve found Alacritty very useful for my retro-computing addiction. Setting it up (key sequences mainly) to emulate an NCD X terminal to connect to a simulated CDC Cyber mainframe was so much easier than with Xterm (maybe a low bar, admittedly). Also easier than iTerm2 I found. The “live” configuration file is a big plus. Maybe I should look at Kitty or some others people here like, but I’m happy with Alacritty so far. It is also cross platform, which is another big plus (I don’t have Windows machines, but it seems stable on both macOS and Linux).

[@MannyGraal]

Hey, i tried i3 once, but couldn't see my flatpak in the app menu. Not sure if you have a video on getting those to show up. Thank you for the videos you make, they really help me see i3WM a different way

[@TheLinuxCast]

i3 doesn't have an app menu built in. I'm assuming you used dmenu?

[@MannyGraal]

@@TheLinuxCast well, I installed Rofi but Dmenu didnt show flatpaks rofi as Well.

[@code8986]

It doesn't even have a scrollbar! The issue for adding one has been open for 5 years.

[@neilpatrickhairless]

First things I do after installing a terminal emulator is kill the menu and kill the scrollbar. They're both wasted real estate for me in a terminal emulator for the most part

[@bstar777777]

I've had bad luck with Alacritty... I seem to always have font rendering issues that I can't resolve. Never had issues with Kitty, so I use that.

[@eugenereim456]

Alacrity can't handle ligatures so if you using zsh or fish with themes like p10k it will look ugly.

[@bstar777777]

@@eugenereim456 yeah, I'm seeing that now... I use oh-my-zsh with my own custom theme and this is probably why I've struggled getting it to work.

[@nishalshettigar]

I guess people who have coded in python would like YAML format, because you need to be consistent with spacing even there as well. In any case, I feel YAML is more readable than JSON or XML or even .properties formats.

[@JadKanounji]

as a Python enthusiast I agree, as well as working with Ansible a lot in my work as DevOps

[@MasterHigure]

Alacritty can't ever support ligatures (without major rewrites) because of how they parse text to be displayed. Which I think is a little sad.

[@cxzhou]

How to achieve this great blur effect in alacritty?

[@TheLinuxCast]

Use picom

[@Octavus5]

How do you do tabs? Tmux?

[@TheLinuxCast]

Vim tabs

[@gokul2003g]

Pls make a video on the How to make an i3 theme selector like that 3:55 !!!!!!! And also share your config files pls.

[@shifter047]

Alacrity works well on mac but I have never been able to fix the fonts on linux. Each character on a given line does not have enough horizontal spacing. They are all slightly overlapping which makes it extremely difficult to read. Does anyone else have this issue and manage to resolve it? I am currently still using termite but may make the switch if I can get fonts to render properly

[@renner0395]

Sorry if this is a stupid question buthave you set a monospace font? I think the default config at least on arch doesnt use a monospace font by default and therefore very hard to read.

[@shifter047]

@@renner0395 I am not 100% sure it is mono but it has worked in every other terminal I have used: st, termite, and gnome-terminal. That is something I will investigate, thanks! The font is deja vu

[@renner0395]

@@shifter047 I tried it myself. change deja vu to Deja Vu Sans Mono u can capitalise the word how you want and can also use spaces how you want. So even "dEj A vU sa n s m OnO" would work.

[@shifter047]

@@renner0395 did you set it as the font family in config?

[@shifter047]

That works! Thanks

[@Jeff_Seely]

I do like Alacrity and I learned a few neat things about it here. It's no BS , that's for sure. It is very functional and minimalistic which I love. But how you feel about Alactritty is how I feel about Kitty, which I view as Alacritty's alter-eqo. I'm rooted in Kitty because it is every bit as fast, minimalistic,and it is Python! I could easily use Alacritty and be virtually as happy.

[@VioletJewel1729]

urxvt still wins. it has everything, can be scripted with perl, takes 75% fewer resources (memory and cpu usage) for entire urxvtd (daemon) and all urxvtc's (clients) than just one alacritty instance, and it spawns faster. the only concession is fonts aren't ideal, but I just use DejaVu Sans Mono and don't expect crazy unicode characters to work all the time.

[@slothtube]

kitty tho

[@lucaslopes1260]

Matt, you can rewrite your alacritty configs in json If you want. In the very same file. Just change the syntax. But in my opinion yaml is more readable.

[@TheLinuxCast]

Kinda choosing between two extremes there. And I'm used to yml now. But maybe that would be a fun project to see what's different

[@9SMTM6]

@@TheLinuxCast that's btw how it works everywhere. YAML is a superset of JSON, everything that accepts YAML also has to accept JSON, you can switch between the styles like a madman too.

[@smeqwack7337]

big problem i have is that idunno how to copy/paste shit and its annoying me

[@TheLinuxCast]

ctrl+shift+v ctrl+shift+c to paste and copy respectively.

[@MajinHico]

why not st?

[@ArniesTech]

It's always a sad occasion when one has to move on, when a loved project ceases to be 🙏😔

[@DavidSoles]

I really like Alacritty but I don't understand why they don't include Linux binaries, forcing you to install Rust in order to compile.

[@JustSomeAussie1]

My problem with alacritty is in windows when using WSL, you cannot scroll. I opened an issue about it and the dev literally said "because windows probably" and closed the issue. It's supposed to be cross-platform but he has no interested in fixing an issue that happens on windows (scrolling in tmux works in literally every other terminal i've tried)

[@calder-ty]

I use wsl, tmux and alacritty daily at work and am able to scroll.

[@JustSomeAussie1]

@@calder-ty Really? Nothing I try seems to work

[@calder-ty]

What do you mean by scrolling? I use the Tmux scroll commands, but pretty sure it works with mouse scrolling as well.

[@JustSomeAussie1]

@@calder-ty I mean mouse scrolling

[@pinkorcyanbutlong5651]

wezterm tho, and whenever it leaves beta: 'contour' maybe

[@itsfish8672]

Me i use Lxterminal, its fine, it works. GVM

[@CyperN077]

Matt I use Alacritty but KItty is my daily driver. It depends on the user. With Alacritty I need to use Tmux for my workflow.

[@ArniesTech]

And THATs exactly the beauty of choice we have in FOSS 💪😎

[@CyperN077]

@@ArniesTech yup!

[@myxail0]

@@ArniesTech but whats the point then, alacritty loses its gpu acceleration

[@10tronic]

Actualmente la configuración de alacritty se limita a la fuente. Y no mas. 😢

[@androth1502]

wait, one of the reasons you don't like kitty is because vim hid information from you?

[@74Bagas]

Yessir, somehow it makes me love my computer more. 😅

[@unclefester9113]

Hyperland. A complex thing for engineers. One more way to burn up the day trying to figure it out. Nuts on steroids. I'd rather get stuff done instead.

[@xr.spedtech]

I want a terminal with auto complete for program parameters ... 🤞😶

[@danielyrovas]

idk man wezterm exists so kinda crushes alacritty

[@nativeme2143]

The beauty of yaml is that you can't write it like crap.

[@webflyer035]

1:25 And I thought It was Arch linux & now the next thing seems to be Fedora Gnome😂

[@folksurvival]

Yep Fedora is the current meme.

[@blwh]

As someone who's not a heavy terminal user I just can't understand why? I know it's really cool to configure the terminal emulator, but i always end up using it for like, 5 Mins max, or do a command and then alt tab. The longest amount of time i have spent on a terminal was when i setting a raspberry in SSH. I could see someone using it as an IDE or other kinds of development software, but there's probably better options outside of an terminal, right? Would really like to know what you guys spend your time on terminal to make such customization and changes worth the effort.

[@tuxhome3686]

vim as an ide

[@Perry....]

For me it's insanely fast compared to any other terminal. It's weird because I have a beefy rig but it's so much faster than other terminals that I genuinely noticed the difference so I might as well stick with it

[@N0zer0]

@@Perry.... For me, st is faster.

[@Flackon]

terminal is more powerful for many operations (e.g. renaming 1000 files) and terminal apps are much faster to run and use. So you want to config your terminal to be pleasant to use.

[@beepolar5157]

Yeap, I agree man. A bit useless. Having said that, why not personalizing interfaces, it doesn't harm anyone, does it? And this Matt guy guys is rather cool, as if you take the time to 'sort' all his stuff, he sometimes provides very useful information.

[@skeginaldp1533]

Maybe I’m linuxing wrong. What are the benefits of switching terminals?

[@uuu12343]

Kitty is oddly impossible to install in my experience, it's weird

[@John7No]

I know this video is for terminals on Linux mainly, but if someone is on Mac, iTerm is the way to go.

[@catwhisperer911]

Yup. iTerm is amazing.

[@blank001]

No hard feelings but, I tried Alacritty first it was a "not so fun experience" I use terminal as my primary text editor with more than 8+ daily, tried Kitty it was awesome it has support for ligatures, plugins, extensions, tabs, windows etc and never had to look for another terminal emulator.

I try and try but I still prefer the speed of suckless terminal, it works best in my 12 years old notebook.

[@rashie]

👍👍

[@richardred15]

Controversy is the name of the game xD

[@jazzochannel]

alacritty vs urxvt 1. themes, yes sure whatever. nowdays there is something called urxvtconfig that can help 2. change config on the fly - ok urxvt does not have that, but you can xrdb -m and restart 3. start with a custom class: urxvt can be started with a custom name and config can be applied by that name, and wm rules can be applied to that name. 4. you lost me

[@Bad-cat_qhuuuuh]

How about kitty ?

[@moneyfr]

IT's my main because of rust but you can't have the copy past from mice

[@TheLinuxCast]

You mean middle click paste?

[@moneyfr]

@@TheLinuxCast I mean contextual menú like Konsole

[@007arek]

Alacritty is a decent terminal, but it doesn't have many features and it's relative heavy. I stayed with st for TUI programs and wezterm for real work. Wezterm is easy to hack, they have great documentation and Devs- one I got very fast one feature that I needed. Unfortunately they sometimes brake configuration.

[@milohoffman274]

Given your history with DWM and the suckless team, kinda surprised you did not give ST a try.

[@milohoffman274]

You should do a review/comparison of patched st compared to alacritty.

[@TheLinuxCast]

I did. I wasn't a fan

[@nikosgiaglis9027]

I'm yet to use Alacrity and this video told me nothing about it. Except that is "The BEST Terminal Emulator. Period.". Easy theme changing? I just changed theme in Terminator with just right click. xfce needed 2 more clicks inside 'preferences'. Critical info here.

[@sid__art_6614]

Well for me all the emulators are same. I use urxvt. All I need is to enter the 🐚. All do the same for me.

[@Little-bird-told-me]

How does kitty compare to Alacritty ?

[@folksurvival]

Kitty is better.

[@neilpatrickhairless]

It has a ton of features Alacritty doesn't have and that I personally never use

[@pressforwardsaints]

I think I'll stick with Terminator

[@rarminqorset3628]

Termite was the best.

[@TheLazyJAK]

Do you ever imagine you'll start other channels like a gaming channel, audiophile/music channel, etc? Would love to know your perspective on your other interests!

[@Prophet6000]

Alacrity is great. I'm a kitty guy over all.

[@gettriggered_ian3269]

ST is the best, sorry Matt.

[@NguyenDown]

The highest input delay. Period.

[@cablecardigital7671]

Alacrity doesn’t support ligatures.

[@0xyznx]

WezTerm is much better than Alacritty, both design and implementation.

[@cqws4194]

st gang here

[@miyolinux]

I use xterm by the way...

[@wisnoskij]

I wanted to like Alacritty, but yml is really horrendous and terminals without tabs/windows are basically unusable on non-tiling window managers.

[@TheLinuxCast]

Yeah, I can see that the lack of tabs in a DE would be an issue

[@yakataz]

Kitty is superior

[@msor6108]

People on Nvidia probably really don't like alacrity.

[@newplayer7743]

4:41 you have insult Python dev (just joking)

[@tepumasutasauno8671]

I like yaml¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[@hermantcherdakli2053]

Alacritty is okay. But foot is better

[@TheLinuxCast]

Foot doesn't work on Xorg. At least it doesn't for me

[@stingfiretube]

Alacritty is junk, can't even open tabs in it. Not particularly helpful for anyone that opens most applications through the terminal.

[@viri1695]

urxvt just works

[@ericcartman8999]

Amateur use alacritty, pro use Wezterm.