{"slug": "konsole", "name": "Konsole", "category": "terminal", "category_name": "Terminal and shell", "description": "KDE's default terminal emulator for Linux and other Unix-like desktops.", "recommenders": 5, "commenters": 12, "warners": 1, "score": 4.434, "rising": -0.31, "first": "2025-11-12", "latest": "2026-10-28", "why": "HN commenters use it as a dependable daily driver on KDE, with a settings screen they find friendlier than the config files of Kitty or Alacritty.", "why_is_quote": false, "has_verdict": true, "sentiment": {"recommend": 7, "neutral": 5, "compare": 2, "warn": 1}, "spark": [2, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 2, 0, 0, 0, 1], "listed": true, "loved": ["Daily driver", "Settings GUI"], "caveat": "Speed and latency", "short_quote": "Thank you for Konsole. It is my daily driver and works well on KDE 6.8 for me.", "icon": true, "domain": null, "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://konsole.kde.org/", "pricing": "open source", "aliases": ["Konsole"], "verdict": [{"text": "HN commenters use it as a dependable daily driver on KDE,", "cites": [{"id": 804452560, "item_id": 50278285, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50278285", "by": "SomeHacker44", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Thank you for Konsole. It is my daily driver and works well on KDE 6.8 for me.", "excerpt": "Thank you for Konsole. It is my daily driver and works well on KDE 6.8 for me. I use unlimited scrollback. It would be neat if it could have an unlimited scrollback that instead of using 15G RAM after a few weeks will dump it to disk and load on demand. And not hang if I hit C-S-F... I use it with tmux sometimes and agents.", "context": "KDE user", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 777268176, "item_id": 48579261, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48579261", "by": "KetoManx64", "date": "2026-06-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use Konsole daily and have all the toolbars hidden.", "excerpt": "It's a positive and a negative. I use Konsole daily and have all the toolbars hidden. Every so often if I need something I toggle them on with Control + Shift + M, but it's once in a blue moon that I need that. I've tried Kitty and Alacritty but the fact that you have to dive into the config file for everything right when you're starting out with the terminal was just not worth the time investment in my eyes.", "context": "KDE user", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "KDE Plasma 6.7 Released"}, {"id": 745019681, "item_id": 46563730, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46563730", "by": "shevy-java", "date": "2026-01-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "we could simply use bash and KDE konsole with, say, 10 tabs. That setup works for me since ages", "excerpt": "> The main problem with Oh My Zsh is that it adds a lot of unnecessary bloat that affects shell startup time. Wowsers! That +0.5 seconds delay will kill cats everywhere. We must microoptimise the startup time of shells!!! Or ... we could simply use bash and KDE konsole with, say, 10 tabs. That setup works for me since ages; admittedly I use bash just as a wrapper for simple actions as well as calling a gazillion of a", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "You probably don't need Oh My Zsh"}]}, {"text": " with a settings screen they find friendlier than the config files of Kitty or Alacritty.", "cites": [{"id": 778109744, "item_id": 48631859, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48631859", "by": "noisy_boy", "date": "2026-06-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use konsole and has significantly more user friendly screen to manage settings.", "excerpt": "Seconded. I keep hearing about ghostty but I have yet to see a strong enough justification about how it is _that_ better. I use konsole and has significantly more user friendly screen to manage settings. I heard about ghostty's performance so I did some timing tests and ghostty was faster than konsole but not that much - not in any perceptibly significant measurable sense.", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "Pledging Another $400k to the Zig Software Foundation"}, {"id": 777268176, "item_id": 48579261, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48579261", "by": "KetoManx64", "date": "2026-06-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use Konsole daily and have all the toolbars hidden.", "excerpt": "It's a positive and a negative. I use Konsole daily and have all the toolbars hidden. Every so often if I need something I toggle them on with Control + Shift + M, but it's once in a blue moon that I need that. I've tried Kitty and Alacritty but the fact that you have to dive into the config file for everything right when you're starting out with the terminal was just not worth the time investment in my eyes.", "context": "KDE user", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "KDE Plasma 6.7 Released"}]}, {"text": " The most common caveat is speed,", "cites": [{"id": 804211746, "item_id": 50263234, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50263234", "by": "adrian_b", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "compare", "quote": "I have used Konsole for many years", "excerpt": "I assume that this depends on your computer/GPU/GPU driver. I have used Konsole for many years and I have used kitty for about 2 years in 2024/2025, then I have switched to ghostty around the beginning of 2026. At least in my computers (with NVIDIA GPUs and Gentoo Linux), kitty was many times faster than Konsole and Ghostty even faster. Moreover, in the now somewhat distant past when I was still using Konsole, it did", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 769649206, "item_id": 48103075, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48103075", "by": "gryffyn", "date": "2026-05-11", "stance": "compare", "quote": "", "excerpt": "I was curious to see what the actual latency was, so I used Pavel Fatin's https://pavelfatin.com/typometer/. Notes: This system is running Arch, with kernel 7.0.3, scx_bpfland, and i3 on X11. Primary GPU is an integrated Intel GPU. Using picom: Terminal Min Max Avg SD alacritty 20.1 111.4 43.8 18.0 xfce4-terminal 19.1 112.5 49.1 17.9 xterm 12.3 152.6 53.1 26.4 wezterm 28.3 106.0 56.2 15.4 kitty 25.3 115.9 57.2 18.5 g", "context": "Arch Linux user on i3 and X11", "use_case": "terminal latency benchmark", "switched_from": "", "story": "Linux Terminal Memory Usage"}]}, {"text": " with some tests showing it slower than Kitty and Ghostty.", "cites": [{"id": 804211746, "item_id": 50263234, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50263234", "by": "adrian_b", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "compare", "quote": "I have used Konsole for many years", "excerpt": "I assume that this depends on your computer/GPU/GPU driver. I have used Konsole for many years and I have used kitty for about 2 years in 2024/2025, then I have switched to ghostty around the beginning of 2026. At least in my computers (with NVIDIA GPUs and Gentoo Linux), kitty was many times faster than Konsole and Ghostty even faster. Moreover, in the now somewhat distant past when I was still using Konsole, it did", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 778109744, "item_id": 48631859, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48631859", "by": "noisy_boy", "date": "2026-06-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use konsole and has significantly more user friendly screen to manage settings.", "excerpt": "Seconded. I keep hearing about ghostty but I have yet to see a strong enough justification about how it is _that_ better. I use konsole and has significantly more user friendly screen to manage settings. I heard about ghostty's performance so I did some timing tests and ghostty was faster than konsole but not that much - not in any perceptibly significant measurable sense.", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "Pledging Another $400k to the Zig Software Foundation"}, {"id": 769649206, "item_id": 48103075, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48103075", "by": "gryffyn", "date": "2026-05-11", "stance": "compare", "quote": "", "excerpt": "I was curious to see what the actual latency was, so I used Pavel Fatin's https://pavelfatin.com/typometer/. Notes: This system is running Arch, with kernel 7.0.3, scx_bpfland, and i3 on X11. Primary GPU is an integrated Intel GPU. Using picom: Terminal Min Max Avg SD alacritty 20.1 111.4 43.8 18.0 xfce4-terminal 19.1 112.5 49.1 17.9 xterm 12.3 152.6 53.1 26.4 wezterm 28.3 106.0 56.2 15.4 kitty 25.3 115.9 57.2 18.5 g", "context": "Arch Linux user on i3 and X11", "use_case": "terminal latency benchmark", "switched_from": "", "story": "Linux Terminal Memory Usage"}]}], "praise": [{"label": "Daily driver", "summary": "Several commenters have used it every day for years and say it works well.", "quotes": [{"id": 804452560, "item_id": 50278285, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50278285", "by": "SomeHacker44", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Thank you for Konsole. It is my daily driver and works well on KDE 6.8 for me.", "excerpt": "Thank you for Konsole. It is my daily driver and works well on KDE 6.8 for me. I use unlimited scrollback. It would be neat if it could have an unlimited scrollback that instead of using 15G RAM after a few weeks will dump it to disk and load on demand. And not hang if I hit C-S-F... I use it with tmux sometimes and agents.", "context": "KDE user", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 777268176, "item_id": 48579261, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48579261", "by": "KetoManx64", "date": "2026-06-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use Konsole daily and have all the toolbars hidden.", "excerpt": "It's a positive and a negative. I use Konsole daily and have all the toolbars hidden. Every so often if I need something I toggle them on with Control + Shift + M, but it's once in a blue moon that I need that. I've tried Kitty and Alacritty but the fact that you have to dive into the config file for everything right when you're starting out with the terminal was just not worth the time investment in my eyes.", "context": "KDE user", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "KDE Plasma 6.7 Released"}, {"id": 745019681, "item_id": 46563730, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46563730", "by": "shevy-java", "date": "2026-01-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "we could simply use bash and KDE konsole with, say, 10 tabs. That setup works for me since ages", "excerpt": "> The main problem with Oh My Zsh is that it adds a lot of unnecessary bloat that affects shell startup time. Wowsers! That +0.5 seconds delay will kill cats everywhere. We must microoptimise the startup time of shells!!! Or ... we could simply use bash and KDE konsole with, say, 10 tabs. That setup works for me since ages; admittedly I use bash just as a wrapper for simple actions as well as calling a gazillion of a", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "You probably don't need Oh My Zsh"}]}, {"label": "Settings GUI", "summary": "Its settings screen is easier to start with than terminals that require editing a config file.", "quotes": [{"id": 778109744, "item_id": 48631859, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48631859", "by": "noisy_boy", "date": "2026-06-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use konsole and has significantly more user friendly screen to manage settings.", "excerpt": "Seconded. I keep hearing about ghostty but I have yet to see a strong enough justification about how it is _that_ better. I use konsole and has significantly more user friendly screen to manage settings. I heard about ghostty's performance so I did some timing tests and ghostty was faster than konsole but not that much - not in any perceptibly significant measurable sense.", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "Pledging Another $400k to the Zig Software Foundation"}, {"id": 777268176, "item_id": 48579261, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48579261", "by": "KetoManx64", "date": "2026-06-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use Konsole daily and have all the toolbars hidden.", "excerpt": "It's a positive and a negative. I use Konsole daily and have all the toolbars hidden. Every so often if I need something I toggle them on with Control + Shift + M, but it's once in a blue moon that I need that. I've tried Kitty and Alacritty but the fact that you have to dive into the config file for everything right when you're starting out with the terminal was just not worth the time investment in my eyes.", "context": "KDE user", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "KDE Plasma 6.7 Released"}]}, {"label": "Tabs and SSH", "summary": "Commenters use it with many tabs and moved their SSH and PuTTY configs to it.", "quotes": [{"id": 745019681, "item_id": 46563730, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46563730", "by": "shevy-java", "date": "2026-01-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "we could simply use bash and KDE konsole with, say, 10 tabs. That setup works for me since ages", "excerpt": "> The main problem with Oh My Zsh is that it adds a lot of unnecessary bloat that affects shell startup time. Wowsers! That +0.5 seconds delay will kill cats everywhere. We must microoptimise the startup time of shells!!! Or ... we could simply use bash and KDE konsole with, say, 10 tabs. That setup works for me since ages; admittedly I use bash just as a wrapper for simple actions as well as calling a gazillion of a", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "You probably don't need Oh My Zsh"}, {"id": 763463908, "item_id": 47716494, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47716494", "by": "morog", "date": "2026-04-10", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "All my various ssh / putty configs migrated to Konsole", "excerpt": "I used Linux 10 years ago, but then due to job or corp. and needing Teams and Outlook I was forced to uses Windows. Now with corp job over I was finally able to switch to Linux this week (Fedora + KDE). Loving improvements made in the last 10 years, KDE will always have its quirks, but it is fast and smooth with no crashes yet. I got Claude to make me a migration script which worked brilliantly, haven't needed to boo", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal / SSH", "switched_from": "PuTTY", "story": "France Launches Government Linux Desktop Plan as Windows Exit Begins"}]}, {"label": "Feature-rich", "summary": "Even a critic called it efficient and feature-rich.", "quotes": [{"id": 804287441, "item_id": 50267965, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50267965", "by": "kombine", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Konsole while great (efficient and feature-rich) is showing its age and has a bit of a widget bloat and an unwieldy configuration system.", "excerpt": "Oh Konsole while great (efficient and feature-rich) is showing its age and has a bit of a widget bloat and an unwieldy configuration system. For that reason I switched to Kitty a couple of years ago when I was transitioning to neovim I'm have not looked back since. This looks like a great opportunity for the KDE project to rethink its terminal application for the modern age. Text-based config would be amazing though ", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "Speed and latency", "summary": "Some tests found it slower than Kitty and Ghostty, though one tester said the gap was not noticeable.", "quotes": [{"id": 804211746, "item_id": 50263234, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50263234", "by": "adrian_b", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "compare", "quote": "I have used Konsole for many years", "excerpt": "I assume that this depends on your computer/GPU/GPU driver. I have used Konsole for many years and I have used kitty for about 2 years in 2024/2025, then I have switched to ghostty around the beginning of 2026. At least in my computers (with NVIDIA GPUs and Gentoo Linux), kitty was many times faster than Konsole and Ghostty even faster. Moreover, in the now somewhat distant past when I was still using Konsole, it did", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 769649206, "item_id": 48103075, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48103075", "by": "gryffyn", "date": "2026-05-11", "stance": "compare", "quote": "", "excerpt": "I was curious to see what the actual latency was, so I used Pavel Fatin's https://pavelfatin.com/typometer/. Notes: This system is running Arch, with kernel 7.0.3, scx_bpfland, and i3 on X11. Primary GPU is an integrated Intel GPU. Using picom: Terminal Min Max Avg SD alacritty 20.1 111.4 43.8 18.0 xfce4-terminal 19.1 112.5 49.1 17.9 xterm 12.3 152.6 53.1 26.4 wezterm 28.3 106.0 56.2 15.4 kitty 25.3 115.9 57.2 18.5 g", "context": "Arch Linux user on i3 and X11", "use_case": "terminal latency benchmark", "switched_from": "", "story": "Linux Terminal Memory Usage"}, {"id": 778109744, "item_id": 48631859, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48631859", "by": "noisy_boy", "date": "2026-06-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use konsole and has significantly more user friendly screen to manage settings.", "excerpt": "Seconded. I keep hearing about ghostty but I have yet to see a strong enough justification about how it is _that_ better. I use konsole and has significantly more user friendly screen to manage settings. I heard about ghostty's performance so I did some timing tests and ghostty was faster than konsole but not that much - not in any perceptibly significant measurable sense.", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "Pledging Another $400k to the Zig Software Foundation"}]}, {"label": "Aging design", "summary": "One commenter says it shows its age, with widget bloat and an unwieldy configuration system.", "quotes": [{"id": 804287441, "item_id": 50267965, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50267965", "by": "kombine", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Konsole while great (efficient and feature-rich) is showing its age and has a bit of a widget bloat and an unwieldy configuration system.", "excerpt": "Oh Konsole while great (efficient and feature-rich) is showing its age and has a bit of a widget bloat and an unwieldy configuration system. For that reason I switched to Kitty a couple of years ago when I was transitioning to neovim I'm have not looked back since. This looks like a great opportunity for the KDE project to rethink its terminal application for the modern age. Text-based config would be amazing though ", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}]}, {"label": "Scrollback memory", "summary": "Unlimited scrollback can use about 15GB of RAM over weeks, and search can hang.", "quotes": [{"id": 804452560, "item_id": 50278285, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50278285", "by": "SomeHacker44", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Thank you for Konsole. It is my daily driver and works well on KDE 6.8 for me.", "excerpt": "Thank you for Konsole. It is my daily driver and works well on KDE 6.8 for me. I use unlimited scrollback. It would be neat if it could have an unlimited scrollback that instead of using 15G RAM after a few weeks will dump it to disk and load on demand. And not hang if I hit C-S-F... I use it with tmux sometimes and agents.", "context": "KDE user", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}]}, {"label": "Font rendering", "summary": "One former user said it lacked some font rendering features, though this may have since changed.", "quotes": [{"id": 804211746, "item_id": 50263234, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50263234", "by": "adrian_b", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "compare", "quote": "I have used Konsole for many years", "excerpt": "I assume that this depends on your computer/GPU/GPU driver. I have used Konsole for many years and I have used kitty for about 2 years in 2024/2025, then I have switched to ghostty around the beginning of 2026. At least in my computers (with NVIDIA GPUs and Gentoo Linux), kitty was many times faster than Konsole and Ghostty even faster. Moreover, in the now somewhat distant past when I was still using Konsole, it did", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}]}], "who": [{"by": "SomeHacker44", "context": "KDE user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50278285", "date": "2026-10-28"}, {"by": "KetoManx64", "context": "KDE user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48579261", "date": "2026-06-17"}], "tags": ["for KDE users", "for Linux users", "for GUI configuration", "for SSH workflows"], "use_cases": ["terminal emulator", "terminal", "terminal on fedora kde", "building and running tests", "terminal latency benchmark", "terminal / ssh"], "compared": [{"slug": "kitty", "name": "Kitty", "co": 5, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 2}, {"slug": "ghostty", "name": "Ghostty", "co": 5, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "xterm", "name": "xterm", "co": 4, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "alacritty", "name": "Alacritty", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "wezterm", "name": "WezTerm", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50261998", "title": "Ghostty 1.4", "mentions": 4}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49996286", "title": "No new Ghostty updates since March", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48861319", "title": "A Love Letter to Flashcards", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48858121", "title": "Good Tools Are Invisible", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48630020", "title": "Pledging Another $400k to the Zig Software Foundation", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48555755", "title": "KDE Plasma 6.7 Released", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"recommend": 2}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-02": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-05": {"compare": 1}, "2026-06": {"recommend": 2}, "2026-07": {"neutral": 2}, "2026-08": {}, "2026-09": {}, "2026-10": {"neutral": 2, "compare": 1, "warn": 1, "recommend": 1}}, "quotes": [{"id": 804452560, "item_id": 50278285, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50278285", "by": "SomeHacker44", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Thank you for Konsole. It is my daily driver and works well on KDE 6.8 for me.", "excerpt": "Thank you for Konsole. It is my daily driver and works well on KDE 6.8 for me. I use unlimited scrollback. It would be neat if it could have an unlimited scrollback that instead of using 15G RAM after a few weeks will dump it to disk and load on demand. And not hang if I hit C-S-F... I use it with tmux sometimes and agents.", "context": "KDE user", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 804297761, "item_id": 50268610, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50268610", "by": "skydhash", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "It's xterm on OpenBSD, konsole on Fedora KDE, terminal.app on MacOS", "excerpt": "This days I don't really care about the terminal I use. It's xterm on OpenBSD, konsole on Fedora KDE, terminal.app on MacOS,... As long as I can use cli and the few TUI software I use.", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal on Fedora KDE", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 804287441, "item_id": 50267965, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50267965", "by": "kombine", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Konsole while great (efficient and feature-rich) is showing its age and has a bit of a widget bloat and an unwieldy configuration system.", "excerpt": "Oh Konsole while great (efficient and feature-rich) is showing its age and has a bit of a widget bloat and an unwieldy configuration system. For that reason I switched to Kitty a couple of years ago when I was transitioning to neovim I'm have not looked back since. This looks like a great opportunity for the KDE project to rethink its terminal application for the modern age. Text-based config would be amazing though ", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 804211746, "item_id": 50263234, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50263234", "by": "adrian_b", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "compare", "quote": "I have used Konsole for many years", "excerpt": "I assume that this depends on your computer/GPU/GPU driver. I have used Konsole for many years and I have used kitty for about 2 years in 2024/2025, then I have switched to ghostty around the beginning of 2026. At least in my computers (with NVIDIA GPUs and Gentoo Linux), kitty was many times faster than Konsole and Ghostty even faster. Moreover, in the now somewhat distant past when I was still using Konsole, it did", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 799976912, "item_id": 49998557, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49998557", "by": "bayindirh", "date": "2026-10-07", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I'm a Konsole guy.", "excerpt": "I made this comment not because I expect software to evolve constantly and with quick pace, but because I feared about something serious happened to the developer, i.e. bus factor. A software package I use which needs constant maintenance is abandoned once. Now, new people are trying to keep things running and I'm trying to help as much as I can. We still can't reach the original developer. We know he's alive, but, h", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "No new Ghostty updates since March"}, {"id": 781917490, "item_id": 48869843, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48869843", "by": "shevy-java", "date": "2026-07-11", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use KDE konsole", "excerpt": "He makes some good points. Anki is indeed popular, so this is true too. I am using my own set of flashcards via self-written computer programs, mostly small scripts. The core is simple: one \"side\" has the question, the other \"side\" has the answer. I enhanced this on the commandline though, e. g. I can refer to local images (we can show this on the terminal, e. g. I use KDE konsole and then some different commandline ", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal", "switched_from": "", "story": "A Love Letter to Flashcards"}, {"id": 781777633, "item_id": 48861102, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48861102", "by": "bogwog", "date": "2026-07-10", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I usually have a konsole window that I alt+tab into whenever I need to build or run tests", "excerpt": "I've been working with the command line for just under two decades. A couple of years of those were spent with vim as my primary editor, but eventually I moved to Sublime and never looked back. But I still use the command line heavily in all my work. I usually have a konsole window that I alt+tab into whenever I need to build or run tests, instead of using Sublime's \"build system\" support. The only time I use vim is ", "context": "", "use_case": "building and running tests", "switched_from": "", "story": "Good Tools Are Invisible"}, {"id": 778109744, "item_id": 48631859, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48631859", "by": "noisy_boy", "date": "2026-06-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use konsole and has significantly more user friendly screen to manage settings.", "excerpt": "Seconded. I keep hearing about ghostty but I have yet to see a strong enough justification about how it is _that_ better. I use konsole and has significantly more user friendly screen to manage settings. I heard about ghostty's performance so I did some timing tests and ghostty was faster than konsole but not that much - not in any perceptibly significant measurable sense.", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "Pledging Another $400k to the Zig Software Foundation"}, {"id": 777268176, "item_id": 48579261, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48579261", "by": "KetoManx64", "date": "2026-06-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use Konsole daily and have all the toolbars hidden.", "excerpt": "It's a positive and a negative. I use Konsole daily and have all the toolbars hidden. Every so often if I need something I toggle them on with Control + Shift + M, but it's once in a blue moon that I need that. I've tried Kitty and Alacritty but the fact that you have to dive into the config file for everything right when you're starting out with the terminal was just not worth the time investment in my eyes.", "context": "KDE user", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "KDE Plasma 6.7 Released"}, {"id": 769649206, "item_id": 48103075, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48103075", "by": "gryffyn", "date": "2026-05-11", "stance": "compare", "quote": "", "excerpt": "I was curious to see what the actual latency was, so I used Pavel Fatin's https://pavelfatin.com/typometer/. Notes: This system is running Arch, with kernel 7.0.3, scx_bpfland, and i3 on X11. Primary GPU is an integrated Intel GPU. Using picom: Terminal Min Max Avg SD alacritty 20.1 111.4 43.8 18.0 xfce4-terminal 19.1 112.5 49.1 17.9 xterm 12.3 152.6 53.1 26.4 wezterm 28.3 106.0 56.2 15.4 kitty 25.3 115.9 57.2 18.5 g", "context": "Arch Linux user on i3 and X11", "use_case": "terminal latency benchmark", "switched_from": "", "story": "Linux Terminal Memory Usage"}, {"id": 763463908, "item_id": 47716494, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47716494", "by": "morog", "date": "2026-04-10", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "All my various ssh / putty configs migrated to Konsole", "excerpt": "I used Linux 10 years ago, but then due to job or corp. and needing Teams and Outlook I was forced to uses Windows. Now with corp job over I was finally able to switch to Linux this week (Fedora + KDE). Loving improvements made in the last 10 years, KDE will always have its quirks, but it is fast and smooth with no crashes yet. I got Claude to make me a migration script which worked brilliantly, haven't needed to boo", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal / SSH", "switched_from": "PuTTY", "story": "France Launches Government Linux Desktop Plan as Windows Exit Begins"}, {"id": 751760289, "item_id": 46985018, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46985018", "by": "shevy-java", "date": "2026-02-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "there I tend to prefer KDE konsole", "excerpt": "I first used telnet in the 1990s to connect and play a text-based MUD. Back then we had large monitors with black background and green text font; for most people black background and white text was probably more common, but I remember having played that MUD for some weeks on such a setup (on a campus site, so these computers were used by students; we only had access to the campus on the weekend as the main guy's fath", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal on Linux", "switched_from": "", "story": "Reports of Telnet's Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated"}, {"id": 745019681, "item_id": 46563730, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46563730", "by": "shevy-java", "date": "2026-01-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "we could simply use bash and KDE konsole with, say, 10 tabs. That setup works for me since ages", "excerpt": "> The main problem with Oh My Zsh is that it adds a lot of unnecessary bloat that affects shell startup time. Wowsers! That +0.5 seconds delay will kill cats everywhere. We must microoptimise the startup time of shells!!! Or ... we could simply use bash and KDE konsole with, say, 10 tabs. That setup works for me since ages; admittedly I use bash just as a wrapper for simple actions as well as calling a gazillion of a", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "You probably don't need Oh My Zsh"}, {"id": 736619056, "item_id": 46038691, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46038691", "by": "shevy-java", "date": "2025-11-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "KDE konsole is good", "excerpt": "I'd kind of want a terminal that can be used for everything, including browsing, image display, playing videos and so forth. KDE konsole is good but I don't see any logical reason why I need to simulate 1980s terminals in 2025. Right now I use KDE konsole to either display something on the terminal or start some other program (such as gimp etc...) but I'd like the interface to actually be the terminal in itself, as-i", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal", "switched_from": "", "story": "Cool-retro-term: terminal emulator which mimics look and feel of CRTs"}, {"id": 734417905, "item_id": 45901119, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45901119", "by": "usrbinbash", "date": "2025-11-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I'll happily keep using alacritty, konsole and xterm", "excerpt": "Yeah, sorry, but if the user friendly alternative to the VT100 emulators is anything like Jupyter, then I'll happily keep using alacritty, konsole and xterm, thanks.", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "The terminal of the future"}]}