Terminal Problems

I have been unable to find the perfect terminal emulator for me so far. It usually boils down to a terminal mostly having good features but then fucking up something that I would consider to be extremely obvious, but apparently isn't.

My requirements are as follows in order of importance:

It has to be able to execute other applications on launch.

It has to smoothly scroll through large amounts of text with the increased speed of my key repeat.

It has to handle SSH connections without messing up the inputs.

The font has to have a consistent size when hooked up to different size monitors.

It has to not get rid of text after resizing the window.

It's preferably configurable without the use of a GUI.

It has to handle scrolling properly.

Ligature support is optional.

Wayland support is optional.

Truecolor support is optional.

Lack of a blinking cursor would be preferable.

Throughout my journey I have used the following terminal emulators with varying degrees of success.

GNOME Terminal

Back when I started on Ubuntu, I used the standard GNOME Terminal. I didn't really care about too many things yet, as I was generally just more learning Bash than anything. The presence of a bar up top annoyed me. Also the thing that is now an instant deal breaker, the chugging through text, wasn't really a factor yet as I didn't even use Vim yet.

Terminator

I decided to take a look at Terminator after the GNOME Terminal. Great terminal generally speaking. Allows you to customize more of it, getting rid of any tedious bars and even the window decorations. Here's where the chugging started to become a factor for me. Another tedious aspect of Terminator is that it slightly changes its colors when it's out of focus.

Termite

After Terminator I came across Termite. Great terminal, were it not for the fact that it, also being a VTE terminal, chugs along in large amounts of text. The first one I used that didn't require a GUI to configure, which funnily enough, was something I was rather cold on back then. As of writing this however, the developer has stopped working on it and told people to use Alacritty instead.

Alacritty

The first terminal that didn't chug along. Great! Actually uses the GPU to achieve that, which sort of set a president for other terminal emulators for me. But then it was the first terminal to bugger up inputs over SSH connections. The more tedious aspect of Alacritty is that it manages to mess up the font size when hooking up different sized monitors. I haven't found a way to get rid of that tedium yet, otherwise I think I would stick to Alacritty and st.

st

Very light terminal emulator, that, despite not using the GPU, doesn't chug along. Also doesn't have problems with SSH connections. Instead, its scrolling mechanism is a mess. Just like the way it handles window resizing. Large chunks of text will disappear if you make its window smaller and then put it back to its original size. Generally tedious but usable as a result.

Can be patched to handle URLs in an amazing way.

Kitty

Another GPU terminal. Closest thing to a perfect terminal for me. It doesn't chug along, can be started with other applications, doesn't have a messy way of handling fonts, handles resizing properly, hell, it even supports Wayland. But, and this is a rather big one, it buggers up inputs over SSH to devices that don't also have Kitty installed.

Wezterm

GPU terminal emulator that doesn't fuck up SSH input, font size, scrolling and is configured in Lua. The deal breaker comes with being unable to be started executing applications. Which is a shame, if it would be able to be execute aother applications on launch, I'd use it without any second thought.

Foot

During my Wayland adventure, I came across Foot. It's a neat terminal emulator that by default fucks up the font sizes, which can thankfully be disabled in the config. Also fucks up SSH inputs. But on the other hand, it doesn't chug and URL handling is great.

Conclusion

I'll stick to st for SSH connections and the like, using Kitty for everything else until some terminal appears that can take care of the problems I have with the rest.

As for creating my own terminal emulator... Maybe I should, but then I am not exactly a programmer. Though that isn't really an excuse to at least try to, say attempt to fork a project and hack in the few features that are missing.

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