[tutfbhuf]

Just recently, I did a terminal latency test with Typometer for the following terminals, sorted by lowest latency:

  xterm (389-1) 
  alacritty (0.13.1-1)
  kitty-tuned (0.31.0-1)
  zutty (0.14-2)
  st (master 95f22c5)
  urxvt (9.31-4)
  konsole (24.02.0-1)
  kitty (0.31.0-1)
  wezterm (20230712.072601)
  gnome-terminal (3.50.1-1)
  xfce4-terminal (1.1.1-2)
  terminator (2.1.3-3)
  tilix (1.9.6-3)
  hyper (v3.4.1)

I only tested for software latency (monitor, keyboard and other hardware latency is not included in Typometer benchmarks). I ran the test on Arch Linux with Xorg + bswpwm without compositor. You can find the full results on by blog https://beuke.org/terminal-latency/.

[forgotpwd16]

Compared to a similar 6yo [1] and 3yo[2] (by zutty maker) comparisons, VTE terminals still (at least pre-46) bad in latency front. (They're as high as VS Code based beuke article.) Xterm still rules it. (Pointed in [2], this is due to direct rendering via Xlib which comes with the downside of having poor throughput.) Alacritty significantly improved, Konsole got worse. About Alacritty, it's pointed in [2], there were various opened tickets related to its poor performance and wasn't an easy to solve problem. So kudos to Alacritty devs for succeeding and GNOME devs for improving in the new version.

Alacritty, Kitty, Zutty, GNOME, others, quite a rejuvenation in terminal development.

[1]: https://lwn.net/Articles/751763/

[2]: https://tomscii.sig7.se/2021/01/Typing-latency-of-Zutty

[snvzz]

>However, if we custom-tune the settings for the lowest latency possible I chose minlatency = 0 and maxlatency = 1 then we have a new winner. Applying this custom tuning results in an average latency of 5.2 ms, which is 0.1 ms lower than xterm, and that’s with having a much more sane terminal without legacy cruft.

But... that max column. It hurts.

[aembleton]

Your blog post is from before Gnome 46 was released. It might be worth trying again to see if you see the improvements that the article describes.

[Vecr]

Huh, the devs really weren't lying, Alacritty really got better on the latency front. I started using it for supposed better security than Xterm, but at the time I think it was quite a lot worse on latency, but the throughput was way better.

[clktmr]

Very interesting! I would propose to add 'foot' to the list, which is also very performance oriented.

[SubiculumCode]

Here I was hoping that the Budgie default tilix was on the good end of this list.

edit: More to the point though, is there much reason to go to kitty or alacrity?

[Xiol32]

Finding it really hard to get off Tilix myself.

Alacritty feels fast but they refuse to add support for tabs or tiling. They just say to go use tmux but that isn't the answer at all.

Kitty is quite nice but if you SSH into machines a lot, all hell breaks loose if they don't have the kitty terminfo files installed, and doing that isn't always possible. You can override TERM, but honestly don't have the patience for it.

[kaba0]

Does it take into account Wayland, and its double-buffered nature (unless you specifically opt for disabling v-sync, see the presentation protocol)?

[Hendrikto]

> I ran the test on Arch Linux with Xorg

[kaba0]

Missed that part, sorry. I thought one of those terminal emulators were Wayland only, hence my question.

[Jonnax]

If the 16ms latency at 60hz bothers you.

Then get a 120hz display which has 8ms latency.

Or there's 240hz 4k displays with 4ms

If that's not enough then there's 1080p esport monitors with 540hz so 1.85ms.

[kaba0]

It doesn’t bother me, I was just interested in whether the benchmark is fair in this respect (it is xorg only, so the answer is yes). I personally believe that 120+ hz gives barely any benefit, though.

[christophilus]

I'd be curious how Foot holds up. In my subjective experience, it feels the least laggy when I use neovim.

[ykonstant]

What is kitty-tuned? Quick google didn't give useful info.

[sevg]

The linked blog post has the details:

> For kitty tuned I used the following settings:

    # 150 FPS
    repaint_delay 8

    # Remove artificial input delay
    input_delay 0

    # turn off vsync
    sync_to_monitor no

Also, Kitty docs have some details here: https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/performance/#keyboard-to-scr...

[vagab0nd]

I use kitty. What's kitty-tuned?

[forgotpwd16]

Kitty with settings in https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/performance/#keyboard-to-scr....