Here's the whole thing as a blog post, with the Konsole info added. https://www.gilesorr.com/blog/linux-terminal-memory-usage.html On Wed, 6 May 2026 at 01:02, Ron via Talk <talk@lists.gtalug.org> wrote:

Giles Orr via Talk wrote on 2026-05-05 18:10:

- I expected `gnome-terminal`'s memory usage to be in line with KDE's `ptyxis`, but `gnome-terminal` shows remarkably well in this test

Would love to see how KDE's `konsole` compares - this is a very interesting test result.

...

(I'm also likely to post this on my blog.)

If you do, can you add in konsole?

Thanks for this info Giles! ------------------------------------ Description: GTALUG Talk Unsubscribe via Talk-unsubscribe@lists.gtalug.org Start a new thread: talk@lists.gtalug.org This message archived at https://lists.gtalug.org/archives/list/talk@lists.gtalug.org/message/ZEUM35U...

-- Giles https://www.gilesorr.com/ gilesorr@gmail.com

Ron wrote on 2026-05-06 20:32:

Giles Orr via Talk wrote on 2026-05-06 19:48:

...

Here's the whole thing as a blog post, with the Konsole info added.

https://www.gilesorr.com/blog/linux-terminal-memory-usage.html

Thanks.

I had to try this `timg` since it works inside konsole, and "wow" it's really nifty. I had no idea this was possible, but sure is handy.

Just tried it on a PDF and ... it worked! Didn't have to switch to file manager, navigate to $current_folder, click the PDF to see signature. Amazing.

On Tue, May 12, 2026 at 1:32 PM Giles Orr via Talk <talk@lists.gtalug.org> wrote:

Evan: if Debian packages ghostty, I'd add it to the stats. :-) Although I'll also add that you can do terminal splitting with any terminal using `tmux`. Not saying that's better or worse, but might offer more choice.

Most on the list didn't see the mail to which Giles responded, because my image was too big. I've scaled it down now. I was asking about whether a single instance of ghostty that was split multiple ways would take up as much resource as multiple instances of the terminal each in their own window. The example I used is attached. I note that ghostty is not in the standard CachyOS repos either and needs to be fetched from the AUR. I wondered why that is and then found this clue on the ghostty website: *openSUSE has dropped

<https://lists.opensuse.org/archives/list/factory@lists.opensuse.org/thread/BMZTZ2DCNWXARP5UD7MECR6PCWOTKR5G/#BMZTZ2DCNWXARP5UD7MECR6PCWOTKR5G> Ghostty from its official repositories as it does not allow packages to depend on a specific version of Zig. This is a crucial issue for Ghostty, as nearly all new Zig releases introduce breaking changes, preventing software targeting a previous Zig version to be compiled.*

Hmm. - Evan

On Tue, May 12, 2026 at 1:32 PM Giles Orr via Talk <talk@lists.gtalug.org> wrote:

I've added `foot` to https://www.gilesorr.com/blog/linux-terminal-memory-usage.html . It only runs under Wayland, but fulfills most of my expectations and is surprisingly light on memory. _And_ it supports pixel-perfect images with `timg`, joining the small group of terms that do that.

Since installing I haven't been able to do copy-paste into or out of a `foot` window, which a deal-breaker if that's how it works. Am I missing something?

Evan: if Debian packages ghostty, I'd add it to the stats. :-) Although I'll also add that you can do terminal splitting with any terminal using `tmux`. Not saying that's better or worse, but might offer more choice.

FWIW: When I first installed it, `ghostty` was too new and wasn't in either the CachyOS repository or AUR. Now it's there, along with its terminfo entry. - Evan

On Thu, May 14, 2026 at 3:53 PM David Mason <dmason@torontomu.ca> wrote: ... but... I don't understand why everyone is so excited about ghostty. I

admit it's cool, and the image that Evan posted is impressive, and also that I spend most of my time on MacOS, but I don't understand the excitement. I use terminals a lot, but usually it's a terminal window in Zed or emacs.

So please enlighten me!

Not sure if this counts as enlightenment, but here goes. IMO, YMMV, etc. This isn't just about ghostty. It seems to me that there is something of a renaissance (revenge?) of the console terminal -- now highly capable and customizable -- as part of an alternative to modern graphical desktop environments. It manifests in renewed interest in things like ASCII art (ie, fastfetch, htop and their derivatives) and a new generation of Wayland-based apps such as Hyprland (which functionally isn't anything novel) and the Omarchy desktop environment built on top of it (which is). These are complemented by other components such as Nerd Fonts <https://www.nerdfonts.com/#home>, which include more than 10,000 icons and enable text-based tools to offer visual cues previously only available in GUIs, for a fraction of the resource use. Even the onboard graphics capabilities built into in CPUs have enough juice to power this, not to mention older computers. Maybe I'm just late to the game, but in the last year I've been discovering a new generation of console tools that are fairly new (to me), spurred on by this drive to the console that I wouldn't yet call mainstream but is well beyond niche. I started exploring it and described my journey in another GTALUG post back in September. <https://lists.gtalug.org/archives/list/talk@lists.gtalug.org/message/YJFPS4UGUKEIZUFWNPMKEXMTESOJC3HS/> That introduced me to tools such as yazi, fd and fzf, and I continue to learn about new ones such as `timg` this week. The fish shell, growing in popularity despite its breakage of traditional scripting syntax, is also a part of this movement. In this context, ghostty is just one of a wonderfully growing field of terminal emulators, from super lightweight ones such as `foot` to kitchen-sink AI-infused heavyweights such as Wave <https://www.waveterm.dev/>. Who knew this category would attract so much attention in the mid-2020s? Has Wayland really unlocked *this* much potential? Heck, ghostty even comes with its own terminfo entry <https://ghostty.org/docs/help/terminfo> to enable its enhanced functions, and I haven't touched terminfo since my Unix days. I picked ghostty for my own use after reading a bunch of reviews comparing it favourably to similar ones such as Kitty and Alacritty. HTH. -- Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada @evanleibovitch / @el56

CachyOS has "ratty", but it needs real GPU.  Built-in graphic of my Haswell cpu (i3-4170) is "incomplete". The default "konsole" is still the best. :-) On 2026-05-15 07:57, D. Hugh Redelmeier via Talk wrote:

Another example, Brody Roberson: "The Ratty Linux Terminal Is Absolutely Insane" <https://youtu.be/IyYQZG9vQV0?si=M2vBe-MthaSbJWI2>

I don't actually see this as actually useful.

Try <Ctrl-Shift-C>, <Ctrl-Shift-V>, <Middle-button>. On 2026-05-14 14:09, Evan Leibovitch via Talk wrote:

Since installing I haven't been able to do copy-paste into or out of a `foot` window, which a deal-breaker if that's how it works. Am I missing something?

On Sat, 16 May 2026 at 13:45, Steve Litt via Talk <talk@lists.gtalug.org> wrote:

Giles Orr via Talk said on Tue, 12 May 2026 13:31:26 -0400

...

Apologies for those who don't care about my epic terminal journey. I hope this will be the last update ... it probably won't be.

Having discovered that `st` doesn't support scrollback, I've decided it's not for me. Apparently the Suckless Tools programmers think you should use a terminal multiplexer (`screen` or `tmux` usually) inside your terminal if you want scrollback. Seriously? That's a lot of overhead, both for memory usage and mental modeling. No thanks. There are also software patches, but again: not interested in building my own if I can avoid it.

Building your own with Suckless Tools applications is a heck of a lot easier than with other applications, and the fact is, if you want to do something as simple as changing the font, it must be changed in the .h file and then recompiled. This is trivially easy, and is pretty much how Suckless Tools programs are intended to be configured.

(Apologies to SteveT - this is an over-reaction to your mostly innocent post. It became a trigger for a rant about a personal frustration.) ----- Saying "if you want to reconfigure, just edit the .h and rebuild" creates a massive divide between old school programmer-hacker-users (like you and me and many of the people on this list) and those who want an operating system that "just works." In the age of Microsoft continuously (and possibly deliberately) degrading their OS, I'd like to see Linux as an OS that's welcoming and relatively easy to use. But even if you argue that Suckless Tools are niche, intended for knowledgeable users like us and not newbies (Suckless has made it pretty clear that that's their intention) ... I think it's unwise to make it necessary to recompile to change settings. Configuration files to change minor settings are a GOOD THING that save users' time. Try to imagine if every piece of software you used (including the kernel, LibreOffice, everything) acted like Suckless: "you want to change that setting? You have to recompile." You'd set aside every Sunday for recompiles (and half your disk space for git repositories), and for the three days until you had the time to do the recompiles you'd be dealing with effectively misconfigured software. We'll always have small clusters of people who are in favour of being exclusionist - people who think hard-to-use Linux is good. And that's their right - although I feel like the only reasons they want it that way are A) so they're a member of an exclusive club, and/or B) they get to feel like wizards because their knowledge of Linux is more obvious. But I disagree with the exclusionist attitudes that go with this - for reasons both broad and personal. I want Linux to be welcoming, and I don't want to spend hours of my time recompiling. -- Giles https://www.gilesorr.com/ gilesorr@gmail.com

Ron via Talk said on Wed, 20 May 2026 16:13:45 -0700

There's an undercurrent of "it should be hard to keep the riff-raff out" mentality that's just bonkers.

That is NOT the undercurrent, and it has nothing to do with riff-raff. What it has to do with is the destruction of DIY, via hypercomplexification, to attract people who probably won't use Linux anyway, and if they tried, are unwilling to edit a file or use Google. A great analogy is automobile air-bags. Air bags are dangerous and injure people in 20MPH collisions because the powers that be specified putting in so much explosive as to protect a person not wearing a seat belt. It's the deliberate detriment of responsible folks to accommodate those who don't want to bother at all.

...

We'll always have small clusters of people who are in favour of being exclusionist

Well, that's one way of putting it. Another way of putting it the wonderful neighborhood analogy. Small clusters of skilled people create a wonderful neighborhood that's an affordable alternative to the strip mall sprawl, word gets out, the neighborhood becomes hip, strip mall big money comes in strip malling the neighborhood at huge rent increases, and the folks who built it become curiosities and are called "elitist", just before they leave for some place less plastic (poser, whatever you want to call it). - people who think hard-to-use Linux is good. You mean like those championing Gnome3? Or modern Gimp? [snip]

...

I want Linux to be welcoming,

Linux has always been welcoming.

...

and I don't want to spend hours of my time recompiling.

[slitt@mydesk st-0.9.3]$ cat jj make clean make tic -sx st.info ./st [slitt@mydesk st-0.9.3]$ time ./jj rm -f st st.o x.o st-0.9.3.tar.gz c99 -I/usr/X11R6/include `pkg-config --cflags fontconfig` `pkg-config --cflags freetype2` -DVERSION=\"0.9.3\" -D_XOPEN_SOURCE=600 -O1 -c st.c c99 -I/usr/X11R6/include `pkg-config --cflags fontconfig` `pkg-config --cflags freetype2` -DVERSION=\"0.9.3\" -D_XOPEN_SOURCE=600 -O1 -c x.c c99 -o st st.o x.o -L/usr/X11R6/lib -lm -lrt -lX11 -lutil -lXft `pkg-config --libs fontconfig` `pkg-config --libs freetype2` 7 entries written to /home/slitt/.terminfo could not allocate color 'brightyellow' real 0m0.732s user 0m0.610s sys 0m0.118s [slitt@mydesk st-0.9.3]$ By the way, the "brightyellow" error was my mistake, not st's. Deleting one line fixes it.

I can't elaborate further, this hits the nail on the head perfectly.

Yep. With Suckless Tools 1 second compiles, you're just compiling your life away. No doubt about it. I'd much prefer a 4 deep 4 wide dependency tree with different versions differently timed with massive attack surfaces and numerous entry points for supply chain exploits! By the way, as I said earlier in the thread, I personally write my software using config files. But I'm certainly not going to ignore the robust simplicity advantages of Suckless Tools just because their config is sometimes in a .h file that's easy to change and recompiles in a second. SteveT Steve Litt http://444domains.com

Lennart Sorensen via Talk wrote on 2026-05-21 19:22:

It looks like someone learned about #ifdef and decided they had a hammer and the solution to all problems.

I think the whole thing is by and for leet haxxor wannabe types. Or it's by someone who thought it fun to troll the leet haxxor wannabe types. Arguably there's a learning experience to be had, but in the worst possible way. Just use Gentoo, Slackware, or Arch if compiling software is your thing. And I'm okay with doing things the hard way just for fun.

Steve Litt via Talk wrote on 2026-05-20 22:21:

attract people who probably won't use Linux anyway, and if they tried, are unwilling to edit a file or use Google.

This thread reminds me of a recent one on another list (which Steve participated in): a guy wanted to buy a laptop, install Mint, and give it to someone with zero Unix experience. His question to the list was, what books should he include: * Sed & AWK? * Vi & Vim? * Emacs? * Korn shell scripting? * ... Plus:

I'm afraid I am going to insist that she learn Vim.

So, turns out the recipient was not nerdy in the slightest. Saw a university semester's reading list, an insistence on learning some inscrutable text editor, and declined the new Linux laptop entirely. What a waste. She could have been a happy Linux user, maybe passing along that info when the topic came up to her knitting group, bowling league, whatever. But now she probably thinks Linux requires a whole lot of work just to do basic stuff.  The opportunity for her as a new user is lost forever. Because someone insisted they go full nerd just to check email, Facebook, etc. What a wasted opportunity. This elitist attitude is worse than useless, it's actively detrimental.

Steve Litt via Talk wrote on 2026-05-20 22:21:

A great analogy is automobile air-bags. Air bags are dangerous and injure people in 20MPH collisions because the powers that be specified putting in so much explosive as to protect a person not wearing a seat belt. It's the deliberate detriment of responsible folks to accommodate those who don't want to bother at all.

I see your point now:

To provide crash protection for occupants not wearing seat belts, United States airbag designs trigger much more forcefully than airbags designed to the international ECE standards used in most other countries. You're right, they seem to have been overly aggressive to protect idiots not wearing seat belts.

However, wasn't it was dealt with for the most part in the 1990s?

TRW <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRW_Inc.> produced the first gas-inflated airbag in 1994, with sensors and low inflation-force bags becoming common soon afterward. Dual-depth (also known as dual-stage) airbags appeared on passenger cars in 1998. By 2005, deaths related to airbags had declined, with no adult deaths and two child deaths attributed to airbags that year. However, injuries remain fairly common in collisions with airbag deployment.

I still reject the notion that airbags are a great analogy to some "destruction of DIY" to "attract people who probably won't use Linux anyway, and if they tried, are unwilling to edit a file or use Google". Sounds like your usual anti-systemd rhetoric, which has nothing to do with attracting Windows users, and makes impossible things pretty easy for sysadmins.