i just use xterm. it has proper unicode support now and is very lightweight. or maybe urxvt if i need more features.
on termux where xterm doesn't run i use st instead, it needs some source patching (very barebones) but it works pretty well.
this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2025
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I use Xfce and Cinnamon, but I always install Gnome Terminal regardless (you don't need all of Gnome desktop to use it). The main reason I like Gnome Terminal is that it is very simple, and it lets you save your own terminal themes and switch between them from a context menu. Xfce terminal is nice and simple, but doesn't have this really handy theme switching feature.
That said, the terminal emulator I used most often is the Emacs built-in terminal emulator (term-mode), because it integrates flawlessly with other Emacs tools. But its rendering and theming isn't as nice as Gnome terminal, so I only recommend it if you are an Emacs user.
I’m just using it for general terminal stuff, nothing terribly fancy.
OP, to be frank, descriptions like "general terminal stuff" and "nothing terribly fancy" are too generic to be useful here. Though, I suppose this is simply indicative that you're (probably) perfectly served (as is) by Konsole.
what do you folks use
and more importantly, why do you use that over the (many) other options available?
Because it came with the distro and I had no need for something different.
One feature that might be nice is some kind of local LLM integration so I can get help on how to tinker with settings and such where i’m doing the tinkering instead of constantly tabbing out to duck.ai or w/e.
Unsure if I understood you correctly, but perhaps Warp and Wave are worth looking into for ya.
Sorry, by 'general terminal stuff' and 'nothing fancy' I mean I just like edit config files, run system commands, that sort of thing. But yeah I'm not like doing complex data management or programming or whatever.
I'll check out Warp/Wave, thanks!
No worries, fam! And thank you for clarifying! Based on your answer, I'll assume that Konsole should suit you more than well for the time being. The moment you're starting to 'live' inside a terminal is when looking elsewhere for something more advanced and/or powerful starts to make a lot more sense.
I’ll check out Warp/Wave, thanks!
Aight. Glad to hear that you're interested! Have a good one, fam 😉.
My suggestion is you focus more on learning to use the terminal than figuring out which one to use. Switching terminals is like a micro version of distro hopping without the benefits.
I use ollama for llms, but being a terminal tool, you need to be comfortable using the terminal.
To answer your original question, I use alacritty. Minimal bells and whistles. Just a terminal.
Uhh, switching terminals is nothing like distro-hopping, that's a ridiculous analogy. You might need to configure the new terminal, but that's it, and there's no cost or conflict.
Fair, although I am reasonably comfortable with the terminal (just don't know all the commands and such, always having to look that sort of thing up). I used to run linux installs many years ago back when stuff like slackware and redhat were the standard distros and X was iffy at best so I've done a lot of that sort of thing, just not in like 20+ years.
But I'm seeing lots of recommendations for alacritty, I'll check it out, though most people seem to think konsole is fine unless I have specific needs which I really don't. Thanks!
I like guake, or yakuake.. they are inspired by the console in Quake. F9 drops it down and hides it. Works for what i need it to. I'm just a guy who recently ditched windows, not a power user.
I like minimal terminals, was using st for a long time and now I'm using foot for quite a while already. Since I'm using tmux I don't need my terminal to have any tab/windowing features
My terminal of choice nowadays is Alacritty. It's nice and clean, has a text based config file and decent feature support. The only annoyance is the lack of tabs, but I spend most of my terminal time ssh'd into a tmux session on a remote server anyway.
It's not nice to make people read through half of your post to find out your question, sir.
Moreover, does the result produced by a search engine not be sufficient? Do you genuinely want Lemmy user's opinions?
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I like Sakura. It's lightweight.