Recently I posted a gripe about `kitty`'s memory usage. This got me curious about memory usage of terminals in general, so I devised a test. It wasn't all that well controlled, but I did open eight different terminals on two different machines (one KDE/Wayland/Fedora 44 and one Openbox/X11/Debian 13, both amd64 with 16G of memory, recent kernels, etc.) and ran the same sequence of commands in all 16 terminals. I used `smem` to record the memory usage for the terminals, both right after they were opened and then after the sequence of commands was run. ==== Openbox / X11 / Debian 13 ==== PID Command Swap USS PSS RSS 115733 st 0 2592 3008 12788 115892 xterm 0 6808 7414 17732 114856 /usr/libexec/gnome-terminal 0 10252 14984 52836 115034 /usr/bin/kitten __atexit__ 0 19772 19783 21168 114615 alacritty 0 34224 43478 98396 115005 kitty 0 56376 66584 129180 115381 ptyxis 0 54760 67603 144640 PID Command Swap USS PSS RSS 115733 st 0 3396 3834 13780 115207 lxterminal 0 7800 11159 42656 115892 xterm 0 11640 12266 22748 114856 /usr/libexec/gnome-terminal 0 10692 15416 53340 115034 /usr/bin/kitten __atexit__ 0 21972 21983 23368 114615 alacritty 0 40188 49444 104408 115381 ptyxis 0 58252 71107 148316 115005 kitty 0 70716 80917 143568 ==== KDE / Wayland / Fedora 44 ==== PID Command Swap USS PSS RSS 30975 st 0 2924 3374 12832 31112 xterm 0 6460 6691 13204 30850 rxvt 0 8936 9440 19248 29259 /usr/libexec/gnome-terminal 0 12168 19005 53420 29417 /usr/bin/kitten __atexit__ 0 22852 22864 24464 29098 alacritty 0 25468 28837 73416 29401 kitty 0 46468 51520 105816 29690 ptyxis 0 73220 79204 141012 PID Command Swap USS PSS RSS 30975 st 0 3204 3820 13836 31112 xterm 0 9888 10119 16632 30850 rxvt 0 12872 13736 27096 29538 lxterminal 0 9824 15343 48804 29259 /usr/libexec/gnome-terminal 0 12660 19313 54056 29417 /usr/bin/kitten __atexit__ 0 22884 22896 24496 29098 alacritty 0 34188 37470 82580 29401 kitty 0 53048 58032 112936 29690 ptyxis 0 75060 81130 143284 The results are ... interesting: - I didn't think I would find a terminal with less memory use than `xterm` - I didn't think I would find a terminal that was more of memory hog than `kitty` (although if you add `kitten`'s memory usage, maybe it still wins) - I expected `gnome-terminal`'s memory usage to be in line with KDE's `ptyxis`, but `gnome-terminal` shows remarkably well in this test - the environment (Fedora vs Debian, Wayland vs X11) doesn't seem to have made much difference at all - of the terminals, `kitty` is the only one that can show pixel-perfect images with `timg` (that was one of the commands I ran) - `lxterminal` doesn't appear on either first recording, my mistake - `rxvt` was running but wasn't recorded properly on the X11 machine, don't know why - all of these terminals (and `smem`) are available from the distro repos - both Fedora and Debian I think I'm going to try out `st` some more. Not that my machines are that badly memory-constrained, but if it meets my other needs, why not use the least memory-hungry terminal? Since I commonly have about ten terminals running across 2-3 desktops, it adds up. If `st` doesn't work for me, I'm going to try out `gnome-terminal` some more. (I'm also likely to post this on my blog.) -- Giles https://www.gilesorr.com/ gilesorr@gmail.com