{"slug": "xterm", "name": "xterm", "category": "terminal", "category_name": "Terminal and shell", "description": "", "recommenders": 2, "commenters": 3, "warners": 0, "score": 1.279, "rising": 0.67, "first": "2025-11-12", "latest": "2026-10-28", "why": "Starting it with the wm keybinds is as snappy as opening a new Firefox tab.", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 3, "neutral": 2, "compare": 1, "warn": 0}, "spark": [1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0], "listed": false, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "Starting it with the wm keybinds is as snappy as opening a new Firefox tab.", "icon": false, "domain": null, "github_repo": null, "official_url": "", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["xterm"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 798121840, "item_id": 49882615, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49882615", "by": "skydhash", "date": "2026-09-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I do care about xterm and tmux.", "excerpt": "The vast majority of software is not that important. I don\u2019t really care about easytag (which I use for flac metadata), but I do care about xterm and tmux.", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal", "switched_from": "", "story": "Coding is not solved"}, {"id": 786405648, "item_id": 49150353, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49150353", "by": "skydhash", "date": "2026-08-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Starting it with the wm keybinds is as snappy as opening a new Firefox tab.", "excerpt": "I'm using OpenBSD with xterm, and when I use something like `time xterm -e 'sh -c \"echo 1; exit\"'`, it says 360ms or something. Starting it with the wm keybinds is as snappy as opening a new Firefox tab. foot and st felt as fast when I was using them.", "context": "OpenBSD user", "use_case": "terminal on OpenBSD", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Shitty \u2013 fast terminal. Memory-unsafe and faster than yours"}, {"id": 734417906, "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"}]}], "caveats": [], "who": [{"by": "skydhash", "context": "OpenBSD user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49150353", "date": "2026-08-02"}], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["terminal on openbsd", "terminal", "terminal for all commands", "terminal latency benchmark", "terminal emulator"], "compared": [{"slug": "konsole", "name": "Konsole", "co": 4, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "alacritty", "name": "Alacritty", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "ghostty", "name": "Ghostty", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "kitty", "name": "Kitty", "co": 2, "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": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49877988", "title": "Coding is not solved", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49149326", "title": "Show HN: Shitty \u2013 fast terminal. Memory-unsafe and faster than yours", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48424545", "title": "Life is too short for a slow terminal", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48099790", "title": "Linux Terminal Memory Usage", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45892191", "title": "The terminal of the future", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"recommend": 1}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {}, "2026-05": {"compare": 1}, "2026-06": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-07": {}, "2026-08": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-09": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-10": {"neutral": 1}}, "quotes": [{"id": 804297760, "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 OpenBSD", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 798121840, "item_id": 49882615, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49882615", "by": "skydhash", "date": "2026-09-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I do care about xterm and tmux.", "excerpt": "The vast majority of software is not that important. I don\u2019t really care about easytag (which I use for flac metadata), but I do care about xterm and tmux.", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal", "switched_from": "", "story": "Coding is not solved"}, {"id": 786405648, "item_id": 49150353, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49150353", "by": "skydhash", "date": "2026-08-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Starting it with the wm keybinds is as snappy as opening a new Firefox tab.", "excerpt": "I'm using OpenBSD with xterm, and when I use something like `time xterm -e 'sh -c \"echo 1; exit\"'`, it says 360ms or something. Starting it with the wm keybinds is as snappy as opening a new Firefox tab. foot and st felt as fast when I was using them.", "context": "OpenBSD user", "use_case": "terminal on OpenBSD", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Shitty \u2013 fast terminal. Memory-unsafe and faster than yours"}, {"id": 775182384, "item_id": 48448899, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48448899", "by": "skydhash", "date": "2026-06-08", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "", "excerpt": "For every query and commands. I don\u2019t use a DE, so pretty much everything is cli based. I use xterm and it\u2019s bound to mod4+Return for me.", "context": "doesn't use a desktop environment", "use_case": "terminal for all commands", "switched_from": "", "story": "Life is too short for a slow terminal"}, {"id": 769649202, "item_id": 48103075, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48103075", "by": "gryffyn", "date": "2026-05-11", "stance": "compare", "quote": "Slightly surprised that xterm doesn't top the chart on the picom category.", "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": 734417906, "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"}]}