The terminal WARS begins! // Warp vs Wave

In this video, I compare two incredible terminal programs, Warp and Wave Terminal, and discuss their features, pros, and cons. From licensing and privacy to command input and output, tabs and windows, editing files, SSH connections, AI features, themes, and customization, I cover it all. Find out which terminal app comes out on top and why.
References
- Wave: www.waveterm.dev/
- Wave GitHub: github.com/wavetermdev/waveterm
- Warp www.warp.dev/
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Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction
01:02 Licensing and Privacy
03:51 Input and Output handling
07:24 Tabs and Windows
08:42 Editing Files
10:32 SSH connections
13:08 AI features
15:51 Themes and Customizations
18:45 Additional Features in Warp
19:55 Conclusion
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[@KnoxLively-j6g]

Knox here, Head of Developer Relations at Wave, so glad you gave us a try! In regards to your feedback about what you DONT like about Wave, we're addressing most, if not all, of this in upcoming releases. Namely around * Lack of layout customization * Lack of theming customization. * Lack of prompt support We will be adding: * The ability to split panes, move panes, zoom/unzooming, drag to new windows, etc. * More themes, ability to edit themes (with JSON support), more font support, set background images (possibly gifs/movies), opacity, and much more) * Current dev builds of Wave support most, if not all, prompt customizations like PowerLevel10k, Starship, etc. And so much more to come! Thanks again for the great review ❤.

[@moond0g]

I didn't want to go to warp for their close source policy, and with your comment I'm going to download waveterm, thank you very much, you're great.

[@Darkk6969]

I am definitely gonna give wave terminal a try. Lots of useful features and looking forward to more in future releases!

[@tba77]

This is very cool when it comes to open source Vs closed my choice is obvious I am eager to see those new features added good luck

[@sTaNdirt88]

Your comment is a great move! One reason more to give wave a try and maybe switch from tabby! Looking forward to the next releases!

[@kzrqgc]

Hopefully Wave isn't as laggy as Warp. That literally killed it for me. About to install wave and check it out!! Btw real pc master race gigachads prefer open-source alternatives

[@zerotheory941]

Alacritty vs Kitty is where the war is, this is a side skirmish between neighbors.

[@jhny0]

st (suckless terminal), consumes ~20MBs of memory whereas Alacritty consumes ~200MBs

[@BreakTheBeat852]

@@jhny0you need to spend so much time customizing st to have a half decent emulator that it stops being worth it. You can just install alacritty or kitty and start working quickly with minimal features

[@dinkledorf2000]

@@jhny0 finally!! this guy gets it.

[@codeman99-dev]

Bah. Alacritty is hard to compile. Hard to theme. And the developers are toxic. I switched to WezTerm after a bad experience with the Alacritty devs.

[@pupip55]

​@@codeman99-devHow is it hard to theme, it's just a toml file?

[@JoePesos]

Requiring an account/sign in for terminal is insane to me, that is the last place i want outsiders tracking. As far as tabs and splitting etc... i don't see these doing anything better than tmux which can run in any terminal. There are standalone programs that integrate and do all these things better (other than AI which i don't want), i guess these programs pack everything in one for those that don't want to be bothered with identifying separate tools.

[@c2vi_dev]

totally agreed!! Those two terminal programs go soooooooooooooooooooooooooooo against the Unix philosophy of one program doing one thing, it's ridiculous. And I do have examples for why this is bad: A terminal having an integrated code editor won't ever be comparable to an actual code editor like vim, emacs, vscode, .... even if they'd add vim bindings (which i can't live without, I'm even working on sth to use vim to edit text in the browser) all my custom vim shortcuts would not be there...... and that just sucks!

[@djaskfjkasd]

if warp wasn't collecting information it wouldn't require you to login

[@cheebadigga4092]

Yeah if they don't collect any data, they'd ask for money since cloud storage isn't free. Soooooooooooo yeah

[@none_the_less]

@@cheebadigga4092 You are cheap and very naive.

[@Kevin-oj2uo]

​​@@cheebadigga4092lol because they will be selling your data which they will get more than you paying for it. 😂

[@paulcarroll5871]

@@cheebadigga4092 Because monetising data is not a thing right?

[@cheebadigga4092]

@@paulcarroll5871 where did I say that?

[@user-xu3so2ug1f]

directly switched to wave, since opensource is in my pov very important

[@topaz-rn]

not going to use wave, since not installing electron apps is in my 250GB SSD's pov very important

[@dinkledorf2000]

"overkill" doesn't even begin to describe it.

[@Pariah902]

This is hilarious to think that a terminal emulator is restricting the options of Shell you can use. What a time to be alive :D

[@TheMikeAngelus]

Kitty. You're welcome

[@tsukuyomin]

Kitty is awesome! It has the best features out of any terminal app, while still being as simple as you could possibly want it to be.

[@Froggie92]

ghostty*

[@ashebanow]

@@tsukuyominthe best features? It is missing most of the features discussed in this video. Maybe you don't care about those features, but kitty isn't even in the same league.

[@tsukuyomin]

@@ashebanow I agree it's a different class of product. I simply do not care for the AI stuff. Most everything they provide can be integrated in a normal terminal with plugins to your shell, and it'll feel more native. Kitty provides other lovely features such as a great image view, or copying configuration files for every SSH session and whatnot. These are much more of a hassle with other terminals

[@aDaily1222]

Kitty, Alacritty, WezTerm, all great...and all support Ligatures! (Warp does not)

[@arctic_line]

So often the features listed for both I was going "why would I want that to be in the terminal?" For example, autocomplete _really_ should be handled by the program that actual runs the commands, which is the shell, and shouldn't be done at the terminal level. And even for the times that I do think it could be a useful terminal feature, I could just do the same in Emacs with vterm to get even better integration with my editing environment. All without needing an online account or have to deal with an AI in a place I really don't need one. Basically, to me a terminal should just be a way to interact with stdin and stdout, maybe looking pretty if I can make it, so I just use Alacritty as my go-to and vterm if I need something integrated with my Emacs session (or wanna leverage any snippets I come up with that can't just be shell functions or scripts).

[@AngriestEwok]

You lost me at closed source. To me, that means: hand over all my personal data to a foreign and potentially hostile entity I have no reason to trust.

[@Deffcolony]

Did you see the "Includes paid promotion" notification at the top left when you started the video? This indicates that he was paid to advertise that closed-source app. I don't trust advertisements for closed-source products, so I ignore them. I recommend using the SponsorBlock extension, which highlights when a video is an ad (I skip these as they are usually unreliable reviews). It's concerning when a channel focused on open-source self-hosted services suddenly promotes a closed-source terminal that requires a login-this seems excessive for just a terminal app.

[@doomalsodoom3605]

wezterm

[@christinwhite4876]

Wave looks nice but I can’t imagine switching from Wezterm at this point, it’s phenomenal. I also really don’t want any AI in my terminal, even a local model in one of my most privlidged appa.

[@DavidCSaint]

Should be top

[@aDaily1222]

@@christinwhite4876 same

[@furcom]

Kitty Terminal 👌🏻

[@bosch5303]

Nvim with images best thing for uni

[@michaelhess4825]

I love warp, I've tried most others mentioned here, none work as well with my flow. I won't begrudge anyone for using any of these!

[@user-gh4lv2ub2j]

Signing in to use a terminal misses the point completely. This is now in the area of people who like to work ON their computer instead of WITH. I got stuff to do; another sign on is out of the question.

[@JoePesos]

The very notion of signing in and needing an account for your terminal is insane to me, who is this for?

[@EliSmith]

So much of this should be handled by the shell, not the terminal emulator

[@vikaspoddar9456]

Alacrity

[@c2vi_dev]

yup!!!! A terminal, that is just a terminal and has none of this nonsense....

[@anatolia23]

Wezterm + Tmux + Neovim. Great combo!

[@ammster1234]

Wezterm also has built in multiplex support now. It's not as customizable as tmux, but as someone who just used tmux for basic splitting with vim to have my commands running in another pane, it allows me to reduce an external dependency

[@anatolia23]

@@ammster1234 Yeah I know, but I haven't tried it yet. I'm using some tmux plugins such as resurrect, continuum etc. and not sure Wezterm supports all of them.

[@anatolia23]

@@ammster1234 Yeah I know, but I haven't tried it yet. I have some cool tmux plugins such as resurrect, continuum, vim tmux navigator etc. and not sure Wezterm supports all of them.

[@vikaspoddar9456]

It's an electron app BTW

[@dinkledorf2000]

ew!

[@vikaspoddar9456]

@@dinkledorf2000 matter of the fact is that they broast it loudly on their website

[@Tian-wi6qr]

They also use React class components btw ☠

[@forest6008]

oh no

[@ImARichard]

Wave is intriguing. I might play around with it a bit. I did just switch from iTerm2 to Wezterm though, and while it took a while to get it configured how I like it, now its just crazy fast and has all the autocomplete/suggest features I would want. Seems like the big sell is supposed to be AI, and frankly I couldnt care less about it. The only CLI commands I would maybe use AI for would be ffmpeg and I use that MAYBE a few times a year. But the sessions/workspaces of Wave could be pretty sweet.

[@benzflynn]

Never used either before. Tried zsh of course on my terminal window but found it was screwing up my regular CLI. Just installed Warp and Wave and will be looking more deeply at them in time. Thanks for video, CL.

[@feieralarm]

The flashbang at 16:32 was brutal.

[@renderwood]

I started wondering how does the Wave remote-ssh editing work? Does it actually download (the file being edited) to local machine, editing happens there, and when saving it is sent back? Or something else?

[@cheebadigga4092]

Thank you!! I'll try Wave :D

[@rip4real437]

Idk its one thing to document it and stuff but its another to be closed source so sure they can say they aren't but behind the scenes they could be

[@docmalitt]

Well the dev beat me to the punch. i wanted to say panes & fonts would definitely be coming very soon but support for local AI models is a god sent for non-pros like me who spend most of the time online (or my Obsidian notes) what 99% of the time leads to distractions - reading other articles that lead to other news and or... well, thx for bringing this up because I can see just how old I am - after playing with Warp since you made a review I returned to Terminator... just installed Power10k prompt and a bit playing with Zellij (multiplexer or wannabe window manager for us regular GUI normies). Cheers

[@hugosantosRN]

Is there any way to synchronize wave settings between my home PC and my work PC?

[@zhongxina728]

bruh, just use kitty or alacritty

[@TheLazyJAK]

I'd love a video about Wezterm

[@pavelsrba3478]

You got wrong icon at 18:44, probably an oversight

[@christianlempa]

I'll slap my cutter! :D thanks for the heads up

[@lloydsshednanigans]

@@christianlempa I hope that's not a euphemism! :)

[@MartinLaskowski]

I love WARP! Haven't tried Wave but might soon.

[@royborgen]

Great video. Just a heads up. When you talk about customization you proclaim warp the winner, but you display the icon for wave. (Yes I watched the full video). I would honestly go for Wave out of these two, just because of the fact that it is open source. (Yes, I'm one of those. What can I say, I have trust issues). Keep up the great work 👍

[@DommageCollateral]

can you run wave on your own gpu?

[@armynyus9123]

Ok I'm a boomer. Used st for a decade, now on Alacritty. But hey, I really gave one of those a try.... Like.. for 10 minutes. What shall I say. It feels like.. here you have this high end beautiful racing bike. Pure and performant. You are the motor but it reacts instant to anything you do. You know every single screw of it, you know why it is there and even the color tone of it fits exactly with the overall appearance. Not a single fraction of an ounce of weight wasted, all has a meaning, all for pure performance.... And then ..this. Like somebody took that racing bike, plus a ton of plastic and paint, and put it around that bike, in order to make it look like a ...freaking motor bike. A poor man's motor bike, since the engine is the same but all sort of fluff around it. Well. Not my cup of tea - but hey, who am i.

[@husanaaulia4717]

termium from codeium doesn't require you install new terminal for AI, but it's only works on zsh

[@soubinan]

Wave sounds like the nerdy sysadmin term ^^ I bet on it! Most important, they plan to add a plugin system... just great! Even if it is written in Golang (pretty singular for a terminal simulator). It is the only really dealbreaker for me if I need to consider one…

[@laylasmart]

Awesome!!! Can both work on Zorin OS and show us how to install Windows third party programs that don't have Linux version?

[@raughboy188]

Yes, they can both work on Zorin. Warp will at some point be avaliable for windows too but wave probably will not.

[@laylasmart]

@@raughboy188 Thanks. The Idea is to leave Windows forever. The third party programs are the real blocker and many of us are used to double click an install. With Linux it is more complex. Will both show us how to install Zorin third party programs that don't have Linux version?

[@j0ny9am3s9]

I’m a sysadmin and initially thought I might find an alternative for my iTerm2 here but instead im disgusted by almost every feature… Those „terminals“ feel like a vscode skin to me

[@kainoa82858]

The best terminal is xterm for X(11) based systems and foot for Wayland based systems.

[@FlightdeckJohnny]

I would like to have a client as a docker installation as well and that bookmarks syncs between the clients.

[@veenified]

Flash bang at 16:31 Also, big bummer that wave doesn’t support nerd fonts.

[@willienmuniz617]

Kitty Terminal

[@ilyeshammadi7278]

Wezterm and a good Zsh config is all I need.

[@chrisblumarten]

autocomplete in warp wins it for me

[@simonl8284]

Why do both omit such a large user base in Windows?

[@erics8362]

Tabby

[@coffeekitkat]

Yes, Tabby!

[@mble]

I believe that graphical terminal shells like those presented in the video, are the future; but they are still not there. At the moment, I am sticking to Alacritty and Tmux

[@KevinLyda]

Why do I want my terminal doing command completion?

[@livb4139]

warp only allows for 40 ai searches tho no? i think wave is better in this regard since you can se your own local llm

[@RocknRolfHamburg]

Hi Christian, I had tried the warp terminal on linux. Even though it is actually good and fun, I switched back to Kitty. The showstopper for me was when the terminal broke during a system update. I think it was because warp was part of the update.

[@denzfarid]

Thank you keep sharing, you enlighten many people🤜🤛🫡

[@erick-1027]

Alacritty + zellij 💪

[@sailorgreg1184]

Warp make all that pretty claims about what they do and don't do, but at the end of the day that's just a "trust me bro" kind of policy. It blows my mind why do tech-savvy people agree to such thing (and tech-savvy people are a target demography for a custom terminal emulation app).

[@thedeemon]

at the end of the day any program has this "trust me bro" kind of policy.

[@muhammadosama3358]

I just use the default one which comes with the OS

[@soymadip.]

Are these terminal or ide?😶‍🌫️

[@brunojuca]

Urxvt is what the cool boys use. Wave seems nice

[@davidhuh8723]

Tabby is also a nice terminal

[@ZiranPRO]

Emacs does everything, including AI stuff

[@jwmcq]

M-x doctor is the only AI I've ever needed

[@kevinhu196]

While I got learned I need a terminal app. Sadly both are not supported on Windows.

[@bosch5303]

Windows terminal is the only terminal you need

[@rolandstierli5207]

I personally use Warp, but there is something that upsets me: WARP is so slow. Every time I press enter, it takes about 2 seconds for the prompt to come back. I use almost the same configuration/settings as Christian.

[@thedeemon]

It's instant for me. Either your version has some weird regression, or something is configured weirdly.

[@kamalkamals]

Wezterm

[@KyleRassweiler]

Closed source and mandatory sign on... debate over.

[@AndrewSelkirkEh]

18:40 Warp was winner, but wave icon shown

[@unokometanti8922]

Wave all the day all days!

[@AlameenAdeyemi]

Kitty 🌟

[@fertxo]

No nerd font support (and several other things, like no Oh My Zsh functions integration) had killed the thing for me. And is a shame, because the software is brilliant in any other aspect

[@warpdotdev]

Hey Christian! Thank you so much for the kind review! Glad you’re still enjoying the look and feel of Warp. Have you had a chance to play with the new Agent Mode in Warp yet? We’d love to know what you think about this compared to the old Warp AI (shown in the video). It can do a lot more than command generation and explanations now - you can use it to walk through any developer workflow from the command line. Let us know what you think!

[@brivism]

Ghostty

[@EightSixx]

as of version v0.7.6 - 06/17/2024 autocomplete is in beta :D

[@GS12478]

I saw the first seconds and thought i might be missing out something. But while seeing the video i came to the conclusion that I don't want to go that path. It looks like another unnecessary layer of abstraction that seems to make things easier, but in the long way you're just doing it more complicated. I think the better way is, to use a simple Terminal with tools like tmux and nvim. Now can configure everything as you wish, store configs and scripts as plain text and in git repositories. If the goal is to occasionally click around in linux like a quiche eater and run some stuff, then i get while it looks appealing. Otherwise, just learn how to use a good ol' terminal like a real neckbeard!

[@juangassa]

What about the windows users?

[@GR3YS0RG4N1CS]

Wezterm. No telemetry, no sign-up/sign-in, linux/windows/mac compatible, configuration is written in lua like neovim, built-in multiplexer (no need for zellij or tmux)

[@nischalstha9]

Bare terminal is best! ❤

[@mechwarrior83]

electron based terminals will always be a passing fad

[@enkoding]

Termius

[@danko95bgd]

kitty because it's fast and has all features, and when it gets released, probably ghostty made in zig. These sign ins and ais are clown things

[@paultapping9510]

tilix or foot

[@Tolg]

Sadly doesn’t support my favorite shell, PowerShell.

[@noeljose]

tty, EOD

[@VoklavTube]

16:31 this is a criminal, don't do it again.

[@therealslimaddy]

Electron Cancer.

[@thedeemon]

Warp doesn't seem to use Electron

[@shiningstar7481]

Closed source, requires account, telemetry... All reasons I left Windows for good.

[@SamuelMellert]

If only Wave would not use Electron.. and would support themes. Not a winner for me, rn.

[@danielberglv259]

Wow, not even sure what to say. First of all, a user account login for a terminal app, why? Secondly, when I use a terminal, I don't want to use a mouse. That just slows you down and kind of ruins the whole purpose. Grep, Sed, Tmux, Bat, Cat, Micro, countless fuzzy finders etc. The terminal has everything already. A terminal app just needs to display a window. Any pre-installed app will work, just as long as ZSH can be replaced with Bash.

[@pantium98]

no windows support mean I can't use it

[@user-ic6xf]

I will not use software that requires me to sign up unless it is 100% necessary.

[@aDaily1222]

No Terminal Wars here...because nobody is using these. Trust me, I've been a Linux/Unix native since the 90's. I am deep in the community. Nobody is using these. A terminal is for navigating the CLI. Why would anyone need AI for that? It's just an annoyance that gets in your way when youre trying to write your command. And the fact you got to login to an account....lol. PLEASE. All this "Advanced AI Tech" and they don't even support ligatures! WILD! That being said, i like that they way they look. They look very slick. And choosing a theme is just one click away. Very convenient. But thats the ONLY good thing. And one pro will not get me to switch.

[@comosaycomosah]

lmao never signing into my terminal....never....plus there is enough ai cli tools where you dont need that anyway...plus besides that closed source....naaaaaa brehhhh naaaa

[@mambo7668]

I use Tabby, much better

[@esra_erimez]

One word: alacritty

[@c2vi_dev]

same

[@Kaka-zs4cp]

Alacrity , alacrity is the better one

[@aDaily1222]

Windows users are deff the target audience.

[@mattn2151]

I just use konsole

[@vieiraes]

a terminal that need account login? bye

[@hagner75]

I'm a simple man. I use default.

[@thatboii3094]

Same

[@DavidCSaint]

This isn’t serious wtf do you need to login

[@eric_so_good]

tmux

[@fedefede843]

Many peopple saying alacritty. Doesn't have scrolling. That is a no thank you for me.

[@agenttank]

i don't understand... what do you mean with "no scrolling"?

[@error4159]

A close source terminal is a no go for anyone with common sense.

[@MattCamp]

you use the mouse entirely too much

[@stianjohansen1899]

Why on earth would anyone want any of these? Bloated garbage