30 Linux Terminal Emulators

@toadie thank you and here is my verdict of using the Tabby today. I am very happy with Tabby performance on the Fedora, i wrote 5 new RUST applications today and pushed it now and these last months, i dont have access to internet from morning to evening, so was not able to put this earlier but tabby is working exceptional well on fedora. I had problems with tabby on Ubuntu but on fedora it works well, so give it a try in case you want.

Yeah in the last days i played around with Tabby under Arch and in a Win10 VM.
No problems. Works very well. Maybe Tabby becomes my new Terminal on all Systems

hmm opacity dosen’t work. Can you confirm that @anon19981772 ?

@toadie thank you and havent had internet since morning, just came back from University. I dont use opacity. If you know of something else or new font then let know. The Intone i tried today, very good, crisp ligature and going to try some more.

Here is another Terminal called Ghostty.
Ghostty use the GPU and looks very nice and smooth.

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This article has been significantly updated with now over 30 terminal emulators (up from 29) including some of those suggested above.

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I have to say couple of words about the software Tabby:

I was watching a youtube video in my native language, made by an Italian user, Morrolinux. The software is a bit ā€œbloatedā€, with a loading screen, and it’s made in Electron, so a bit heavy and and cumbersome, but is worth install and use it.

He was saying this terminal it’s the perfect choice if you are in a scenario when you have the necessity to remote connect in ssh in many many different computers. For example you have the multi tab functionality (as many terminals nowdays), but at the top of the terminal you’ll se the name of the host where you are connected to. More over you can customize the colors and the icons of each tab.
More over you can create your personal list of hosts, they might are grouped and each singular tab can be tiled with others.

He said, and I’m agree with him, this solution might help from a terrible headache, in terms where you need to connect to many ssh remote terminals and you absolutely can’t do any mistakes while launching command in different machines.

That’s not my daily use case, but I’ll give a try to this software and I’ll share with you what are my impressions.

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I now almost only use tabby, I have become very accustomed to tabby

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edit:
I tried to install and use the software Tabby, I have to say the software is powerful but a bit tricky to understand for newbies. Here’s my first impressions as new user:

  • Tab snapping functionality is not so intuitive, it took almost 5 - 10 minutes for understand how to use this function. Once I learnt it’s ok, but to be honest I had some initial doubts how it works, and for a while I was thinking this feature is broken.
  • I need to google a bit for understand how to put transparent background, I know this is not an important feature, but I like to use transparent consoles. That’s personal taste.
  • I found the functionality for store various terminal sessions a bit tricky: Ok it’s working, but the default bloated ā€œbuilded-inā€ connections was a bit cumbersome: I need to google this as well for understand I need to check the option ā€œhide builted-in profilesā€.
  • I liked the functionality for local store ssh keys, so no needed to remember all ssh machines key
  • The software is a bit heavy in terms of hard drive space, almost some hundreds of megs, not a big problem, but keep in consideration
  • On official github page there’s a release for every OS and architecture, I downloaded the default deb-amd64 package and everything went fine, no missed dependencies.

Thanks for sharing that terminals list, I think I found my green garden using Tabby.
Before I was using default XFCE terminal, that’s a huge forward step!

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I agree with you on all points.
Nevertheless, I am of the opinion that it is worthwhile to deal with tabby. The terminal is still quite young, who knows how it will develop.

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I use the Xfce terminal whenever I’m using the Xfce desktop environment, and as you say, it is comfortable to use. I also use roxterm when I’m not using a desktop environment and I have to say it’s just as good as the Xfce terminal, but it may not get that much recognition or use, which is too bad. Perhaps for some people they want and need the absolute latest and greatest terminal emulation possible. If an ordinary terminal will suffice - and it certainly does for me, roxterm is my usual go to terminal. It does all that I need without requiring a lot of extra packages or excess baggage.

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To be honest, any standard terminal of any distro is absolutely sufficient. Whether XFCE or KDE or GNOME, the terminals work and offer a lot.

But Linux tempts you to look for the ā€œoptimumā€ for yourself. At least that’s how I feel.

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I agree wholeheartedly with this statement. @hydn listed over 30 options for terminals. The initial search to find one that you like maybe a bit daunting, but once found your workflow will take off like a rocket.

I guess there can be a new terminology for choosing a terminal… Termihopping … :man_shrugging:

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haha I like that! A feel-good workflow is the most important thing

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I am still buzzing on this one:

Zed is an AWESOME terminal and the first rival to Terminator for me.

Had me gushing recently:

That ā€œ50 linux text editorsā€ post was a fork in the road for me. So much of my workflow changed rapidly after decades set in my ways.

One part of that is that ā€˜IDE’ versus ā€˜Terminal’ versus ā€œLLM Chatā€ versus ā€œgit interfaceā€ all kinda clicked like a perfect Tetris.


( Especially now when we want to say to an LLM: WTF is even going on in this file? Or this terminal session? Within the last 24 hour that lead to discovery of an SSD drive about to die and I could not for the life of me identify what actual device it was from insane log vomit. )

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Considering that I have been using only some pretty simple terminals - roxterm and the Xfce terminal, I can get around fine without a lot of extra bells and whistles on my terminals, but just to be ā€œopenā€ to other things, as a retired software engineer and software tester, I probably don’t need one of the fancy terminals.
Still, I’m interested in ā€œcompellingā€ use cases where someone would use another terminal. Please let me know why, at least for you, why various terminals, particularly newer ones, appeal - what do they make more effective for you in your regular work, or is it simply something about their appearance that appeals to you?

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Some more for the list:

  • sakura
  • rio
  • ivyterm
  • cogno
  • electerm
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Thanks for adding these! Will review and include in the main article. Welcome to our forums. :handshake:

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thank you!
and here is one more addition: contour

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