Introducing
The Slant team built an AI & it’s awesome
Find the best product instantly
Add to Chrome
Add to Edge
Add to Firefox
Add to Opera
Add to Brave
Add to Safari
Try it now
4.7 star rating
0
Linux
Software
Programming
Computer
Terminal
What is the best terminal for Arch Linux?
5
Options
Considered
44
User
Recs.
Dec 29, 2023
Last
Updated
Related Questions
Activity
Have feedback or ideas?
Join our community
on Discord
Ad
5
Options
Considered
Best terminal for Arch Linux
Price
Font Ligatures
Configurable
--
Alacritty
FOSS
No
Yes, via automatically reloading YAML configuration file
--
Sakura
-
-
-
--
kitty
FREE
-
-
--
iTerm2
-
-
-
--
Guake
-
-
-
See Full List
--
Alacritty
My Rec
ommendation
for
Alacritty
My Recommendation for
Alacritty
All
8
Experiences
2
Pros
4
Cons
1
Specs
Top
Con
•••
Sacrifices basic features for raw performance
The Suzuki GSXR of terminals. Or your ditzy, blonde high school cheerleader; fast and pretty but not a lot going on under the hood. Eschews a negative developmental philosophy towards including said functionality, with the official reason cited in project documentation as "Not within the realm of a terminal emulator" and ostensibly, "best left up to other tools such as terminal multiplexers" [such as screen or tmux]. Which is unfortunate when you factor in speed against terminal with the functionality built in vs their reliance on 3rd party tools: tmux on alacritty: 'find /usr' time: 3.234s, cpu: 72% tmux on konsole: find /usr' time: 1.777s, cpu: 96% See issue here.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Blazing fast rendering with GPU-accelerated
Written in Rust with a philosophy focusing on speed and simplicity, Alacritty is one of the fastest terminal emulators out there.
See More
ResponsiveByggvir's Experience
speed unicode support great default config
See More
Specs
Font Ligatures:
No
Configurable:
Yes, via automatically reloading YAML configuration file
GPU Acceleration:
Yes
Top
Pro
•••
Simple configuration
The configuration file is very well made and easy to use. You can fine tune your preferences to perfection in a matter of minutes.
See More
RageGamer's Experience
Amazing terminal, simple and to the point.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Comprehensive font options
Alacritty can be configured to adjust line spacing (height), letter spacing (width), and individual character horizontal/vertical positions.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Looks good
Alacritty looks very slick on Linux, especially with GNOME or i3.
See More
Hide
See All
FOSS
Recommend
22
2
--
Sakura
My Rec
ommendation
for
Sakura
My Recommendation for
Sakura
All
1
Pros
1
Top
Pro
•••
Starts quickly even on lower-end machines
Sakura's quick start-up time becomes noticeable with lower-end machine's such as Eeepc 1015PX (Intel Atom 1.6 Ghz and 2 GB of RAM).
See More
Hide
Get it
here
Recommend
1
--
kitty
My Rec
ommendation
for
kitty
My Recommendation for
kitty
All
6
Experiences
1
Pros
4
Cons
1
Top
Pro
•••
Extensible Kitten framework
Supports plugins to add features one at a time for those who need them. Examples include Unicode input and side-by-side diffs.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Difficult to configure for people used to using a GUI
Kitty is 100% confgured using a kitty.conf text file with no GUI interface.
See More
Doug Bromley's Experience
Has been fantastic once over the initial learning curve of setting up the terminal using the text config file. Its power is limitless, with pluginability and extensibility with command chains.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Window tiling
Very elegant keyboard shortcuts for creating and navigating between tiled terminals within each tab with no appreciable lag.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Tabs for multiple instances
Operate several terminals from one window using the tabs feature, allowing you to make simultaneous connections to different remote hosts.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Controlled and configured from the shell prompt within the program itself
No graphical menus to clutter the screen saves system resources and time once you learn that all those options are still available from the command line within the app.
See More
Hide
See All
FREE
Recommend
9
2
--
iTerm2
My Rec
ommendation
for
iTerm2
My Recommendation for
iTerm2
All
28
Experiences
1
Pros
21
Cons
5
Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Works well with tmux
The great mouse and clipboard support that are built-in go really well with tmux.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Keycodes are not passed through following Linux standards
If you come from a Linux terminal emulator (Gnome Terminal, Konsole...) and you rely on key-combos that are widely supported in those, porting the same functionality to iTerm is possible but will require a lot of research and configuration on your part, so account for a long painful adoption period.
See More
Doug Bromley's Experience
Not available for Linux.
See More
Specs
Supported platforms:
macOS
Ligature support:
Yes
Top
Pro
•••
Autocomplete is built-in
iTerm has autocomplete features built in. It remembers your past commands and when you are writing something on the terminal, simply pressing Control-; it will show you a drop down menu of suggestions from which to choose.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Way too many menu items and settings
Finding the right one is like searching for a needle in a haystack.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Cmd+Shift+I to Input all
Wanna SSH your server from multiple tabs, here you go.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Doesn't support Snow Leopard 10.6.8
Some people still use Snow Leopard or other 32-bit systems.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Can immediately open files inside a text editor
You can Ctrl+Click on a file path to open said file in a text editor.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Doesn't support RTL
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Complete out of the box
Unlike most terminal emulators, iTerm2 comes with a pretty complete set of features. It has built-in search, autocompletion, tabbed navigation, Growl support and even a built-in clipboard manager for various API keys and such.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Not quite as fast as Alacritty or Kitty
Comparing these 3 terminals on the same machine/config, iTerm stands out as the slowest of the bunch. The difference may not be noticeable to all users.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Cmd+D to split plane vertically
Very handy to use multi-tab.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Supports mouse actions
Has support for mouse actions like clicking, dragging, selecting, etc.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Extremely customizable
Other than being able to customize the various shortcuts, iTerm2 also lets you customize the colorscheme, font, transparency, etc.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Beautiful, minimalistic and elegant UI
It's super-clean and during use it gets completely out of the way, it's a beautiful canvas for your terminal work, a pure joy that never gets old.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
GPU-rendered, blazing fast and super smooth
Many people say they use Kitty or Alacritty because they are GPU-rendered. That was true a long time ago. But iTerm2 has been GPU rendered for years now. It's so fast and smooth that you soon forget you are in a terminal.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Supported by many applications as a terminal app selection
If an application has terminal integration, there is high probability it allows iTerm2 to be selected.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
You only need to type in commands once
iTerm2 can store up to 4M of history of commands you already used. This, coupled with the built-in search features makes it possible to type a command only once and then search for it through the history for subsequent uses.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Works perfect with Oh My Zsh
It's a perfect base to add Oh My Zsh on top of it and enjoy a lot of themes and a really pleasant look and feel.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Intuitive
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Split panes
Easy to split panes to either horizontal or vertical sections. Makes it easy to observe multiple console windows.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Can be configured as a drop-down terminal
Can be configured to work as a drop down terminal like Quake.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Works well with powerline fonts
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Any key can be mapped to any function
Using the Preferences Menu you can set up hotkeys to map virtually any action you can think of to a single key or a combination of them. This is extremely helpful as it allows you to use shortcuts to edit commands you are typing in the terminal and while most terminal emulators have shortcuts for this sort of thing, few of them let you define your own.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Completely free and open source
iTerm2 is completely free and open source. It's released under the GPLv2 license.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Active maintainers
Issues resolved fast by quality contributors.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Fine tuning for fonts
It's possible to choose a font and adjust vertical and horizontal spacing.
See More
Hide
See All
Get it
here
Recommend
4
2
--
Guake
My Rec
ommendation
for
Guake
My Recommendation for
Guake
All
5
Pros
5
Top
Pro
•••
Shortcut key F12 can be used to toggle
The global shortcut key, F12, can be used to easily toggle the terminal window.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Tabs support
Guake supports tabs, while working with them is very easy.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Extremely customizable
Guake's appearance is very customizable: from the transparency to the width and height of the window. You can also choose which key to use for toggling the terminal window.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Hotkey support
Guake is very fast and easy to open with a customizable hotkey, meaning there's no fiddling with menus or icons.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Drop-down terminal
You can hit F12 (by default, though it's customizable) to open a terminal overlay, Quake-style, as a drop-down from the top of the screen.
See More
Hide
See All
Get it
here
Recommend
2
Don't see your favorite option? Add it.
Built By the Slant team
Find the best product instantly.
4.7 star rating
Add to Chrome
Add to Edge
Add to Firefox
Add to Opera
Add to Brave
Add to Safari
Try it now - it's free
One sec!
Are you sure that you want to abandon your hard work?
Delete Work
Continue working
{}
undefined
url next
price drop