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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

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Alacritty, Konsole, or something else? Which terminal emulator do you recommend? (lemmy.blahaj.zone)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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So, Konsole shipped by default with KDE Plasma, my current Desktop Environment. While I don't have a problem with it, I am interested in what other people are using, because there very likely is something better out there.

Specifically I've seen talk of Kitty and Alacritty, although I've also read that the dev of Kitty is allegedly kind of a jerk, so I am specifically interested in how Konsole matches up to Alacritty in your experience, but other suggestions and general terminal emulator discussion are also welcome!

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Call me boring, but I really like the Gnome terminal.

There was one terminal that blew my mind in terms of speed and features, and it was Kitty: it's properly fast and it's packed with fantastic features, such as the ability to display images and play videos in the terminal itself.

However, I uninstalled it because it did one thing that really, REALLY rubbed me the wrong way: by default, it phones home to find updates.

Any software that phones home behind my back, even with good intentions, and particularly something as essential as a terminal in which you type all sorts of passwords, gets a hard pass from me. But if you don't mind, I highly recommend it.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago (1 children)

by default, it phones home to find updates.

Do you have a source for that? I just did a rough check using nethogs (on my Arch box) and I didn't see any connections originating from kitty.

I also found this comment from the author mentioning that he wasn't a fan of automatic updates (which implied it wasn't a feature).

and no I dont want to do automatic updates, am not a fan of those. If and when you have an issue or want to try new functionality, its just a simple command to update it.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Do you have a source for that?

Yeah, my own eyes: it told me an update was available. That alarmed me enough to look around, and I found a toggle in the config file to disable automatic update checking. It was on by default.

Then I promptly uninstalled it. Too bad, because I really liked it.

EDIT: maybe I wasn't clear: it doesn't auto-update, it checks for updates. Slight difference. What bothers me with that is that it does networking operations when a terminal has no business doing any networking at all.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Hmm, sounds like you used a binary build that wasn't packaged by your distro, which explains why I didn't see any network traffic from my Kitty which I installed from the Arch repos. The config docs mentions this:

update_check_interval

The interval to periodically check if an update to kitty is available (in hours). If an update is found, a system notification is displayed informing you of the available update. The default is to check every 24 hours, set to zero to disable. Update checking is only done by the official binary builds. Distro packages or source builds do not do update checking.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Ah right. Well it's possible, I don't really remember. That was quite some time ago.