Summary of "Ranking The Most Popular Terminals"
Overview
A YouTuber stress-tests and ranks popular GPU/fast terminals—Electrity, Terminator, Ghosty, Kitty, Westerm—and also mentions Warp (with brief references to Tmux / “Omari” / DHH in passing). The evaluation emphasizes:
- Startup performance
- Resource usage (CPU/memory)
- Rendering and scrolling responsiveness
- Feature tradeoffs (tabs/splits, GPU acceleration, and configuration style)
Terminals compared
- Electrity
- Terminator
- Ghosty
- Kitty
- Westerm (notably problematic on Wayland)
- Warp (disqualified for a forced account requirement)
Mentioned: Tmux (as a workaround for tabs/splits in terminals that lack those features).
Startup time test
The test uses a GNOME Terminal tool plus “Hyperfind” to launch multiple instances.
Measured average/min/max startup times
- Ghosty: ~320 ms avg (min ~308, max ~336)
- Electrity: ~197 ms avg (min ~170, max ~248)
- Terminator: ~256 ms avg (described as in-between)
- Westerm: ~56–74 ms (fastest in the results; extreme values mentioned)
- Warp: disqualified because it requires creating an account, which the speaker strongly dislikes
CPU vs memory usage
CPU usage
- Deemed not worth benchmarking (all ~<0.1%).
Memory usage (RAM)
- Electrity: ~230 MB
- Ghosty: ~340 MB (unexpectedly higher than Electrity)
- Kitty: ~250 MB (roughly comparable to Electrity)
- Terminator: ~89 MB (lowest)
- Westerm: ~80–90 MB (after forcing X11 mode instead of Wayland)
Rendering speed / “scrolling feels sluggish?” tests
A large text file (~20MB, ~1 million lines) was used. The speaker benchmarked/cat output time to gauge responsiveness.
Rendering/response (average times)
Most terminals landed around ~2.5 ms:
- Electrity: ~2.5 ms avg
- Ghosty: ~2.5 ms avg (similar to Electrity)
- Kitty: ~2.5 ms avg
- Warp: not tested properly
- Terminator: only noticeably slower here, averaging around ~4 ms
- Westerm: “not working properly” for parts of the test; still referenced but with issues
Scrolling feel
- The speaker reports no noticeable sluggishness across terminals (assuming decent hardware).
True color / transparency checks
- Color and transparency differences were hard to perceive (everything looked “gray” to the speaker).
- Conclusion: differences appear to come more from features than from color accuracy.
Feature/UX & configuration takeaways
Electrity
- No tabs or splits (workaround: Tmux)
- GPU accelerated (major pro)
- Configuration via YAML
Kitty
- GPU acceleration and tabs
- Tabs demonstrated via Ctrl+Shift+T
- Configuration described as “config files” (speaker considers this the way it’s configured)
Ghosty
- GPU acceleration and a nice UI
- Uses Lua for configuration (noted as relevant if you prefer Vim/Neovim-like workflows)
- Tabs at the top
- Includes copy text popups (speaker specifically likes this UX)
Terminator
- Has tabs
- No GPU acceleration (considered a downside)
Westerm
- Breaks/throws errors on Wayland; forced into X11 mode
- Still performs well on speed/RAM in the tests
Ranking / tier conclusions
- Warp: fails early due to mandatory account creation → not rated as a winner
- Westerm: C tier (fast, but Wayland incompatibility is a dealbreaker)
- Terminator: B tier (tabs, but no GPU acceleration; also slower rendering in one test)
- Electrity / Ghosty / Kitty: treated as top tier (S tier) for performance and overall feel
Final pick among the S-tier
- Electrity, largely because it matches the speaker’s preferences and performed best overall—especially with GPU acceleration.
Main speakers / sources
- Main speaker: the YouTuber narrator (unnamed in the subtitles)
- Referenced entities: terminal projects including Electrity, Terminator, Ghosty, Kitty, Westerm, Warp, plus Tmux, GNOME Terminal, and Hyperfind (the launcher/benchmarking tool)
Category
Technology
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