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Add to SafariWhen comparing st vs Tilix, the Slant community recommends st for most people. In the question“What are the best terminal emulators for UNIX-like systems?” st is ranked 8th while Tilix is ranked 12th. The most important reason people chose st is:
st is built to serve as a lightweight terminal emulator. It's very light and doesn't require many resources to run, making it able to run well on older and low-end machines.
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Low memory usage
st is built to serve as a lightweight terminal emulator. It's very light and doesn't require many resources to run, making it able to run well on older and low-end machines.
Pro Extremely simple architecture
st consists of a single C file that takes seconds to recompile. This also makes it very easy to understand and customize.
Pro 24-bit "True Color" support
st supports color escape sequences for a full 16 million 24-bit color spectrum, instead of the typical 256 colors.
Pro Support for fontconfig
There is full XFT (X Free Type interface library) and fallback font support through fontconfig in st. If your selected font is missing a certain glyph or symbol, but one of your other installed fonts has it, it will be shown.
Pro Copyfree licensing
Copyfree licensing implies that the user has the freedom to copy, use, modify, and distribute what he/she possesses.
Pro Image previews
Handles image previews (e.g. in ranger) way better than other terminal emulators.
Pro Patches are great
The patches on the site are great. Scroll back, hide the mouse, etc.
Pro Minimalist
Hackable and lightweight.
Pro Blazing fast
it is extremely responsive and fast, even on older computers.
Pro Clean
The terminal doesn't have any bloated features nobody uses. It is very minimal and extendable.
Pro Multiple sessions inside a single window
In addition to tiling, Tilix supports placing separate sessions in tabs or switching from one to another through a sidebar.
Pro Tiling makes for ease of use
The user can split terminals horizontally or vertically, according to their needs or preferences.
Pro Integrates nicely into GNOME 3
Tilix follows the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines and uses the UI patterns of this desktop environment.
Pro Good alternative to Terminator
Tiling and ability to type into multiple terminals simultaneously is Terminator's 2 most significant features. Tilix has them as well.
Pro Configurable shortcuts
Many actions in Tilix can be triggered with configurable shortcuts.
Pro GNOME Human Interface Guidelines
Tilix follows GNOME HIG whereas gnome-terminal doesn't. GNOME should use Tilix as their default terminal.
Pro Transparent background
Unlike the standard GNOME Terminal, Tilix supports configurable background transparency.
Pro Fancy looks
Tilix has that new GNOME look, with a HeaderBar. It can also be disabled.
Pro Able to write into multiple terminals simultaneously
Inside a session, you can select multiple terminals, which will receive the same input simultaneously.
Pro Can be used as a drop-down terminal
The new 1.30 version of Tilix supports a quake mode enabling it to work as a drop-down terminal.
Pro Extremely fast
As fast as gnome-terminal, if not faster.
Pro Copy on select
Pro Faster than Gnome Terminal
When running commands it feels snappier.
Pro Easy
Pro Copy as HTML
You can copy text from the terminal as HTML for embedding in web settings.
Pro Lightweight
Pro Solarized themes built-in
Great support for solarized color schemes, and no setup is involved.
Pro Terminus can notify you about finished tasks and perform actions based on terminal output
Cons
Con Configuration requires recompiling
Though recompilation takes seconds, knowledge of C header files is required for customization (though it's pretty easy to do for someone who knows how to edit config files).
Con Text is cut off when resizing windows
In the vanilla build, when reducing windows, lines do not wrap, they are cut off. When the window is made large again, some of the text is missing.
Con Crashes when some characters or colored fonts are displayed
Con No scrollback by default
The best way to perform scrollback is to use a multiplexer (such as tmux, screen, or dvtm) if you want scrollback and reverse-search support.
Con New features means installing patches
Just to get copy/paste support and scrolling, you have to install patches. And it's not that intuitive for a beginner.
Con Internal border/margins
Doesn't support internal margins.
Con Source code edits (aka configs) need to be redone after updating
Con Imperfect fontconfig support for CJK characters
It [st] doesn't seem to use CJK fonts provided by fontconfig while other programs use such fonts.
Con Unmaintained
Bugs and pull requests are not processed.
Con No font ligatures
Con Takes a bit more memory than Gnome terminal
Would've expected this to be more lightweight.
Con Heavyweight
Tilix has quite a lot of dependencies and takes ~100MB of RAM when running.
