GPU-accelerated terminals: maximum fluidity and speed! ⚡🚀

Summary

GPU-accelerated devices offer smoother scrolling and higher refresh rates than traditional devices. 🚀
Using the GPU can improve overall performance by displaying text faster, which speeds up command completion. ⏩
Even when using integrated graphics, GPU-equipped devices reduce the CPU's workload, allowing for more graphical effects without sacrificing speed. 🎨

A Linux terminal performs several functions, but primarily, it displays line after line of text. While it might not seem like the most obvious use of your GPU, these terminals can harness that power in some very interesting ways. 🤔

What makes a GPU-accelerated device different? 🖥️

You might think that a GPU-accelerated terminal would have flashy animations and fancy effects. While this is possible, these effects are easy to add without relying on the GPU. 😅

There are flashier terminals, like the GhostTTY terminal, with very attractive built-in tabs, but they're the exception, not the rule. In many cases, a GPU-accelerated terminal doesn't look much different from a "standard" terminal. It may feel a little different, thanks to factors we'll explore later in the article, but you can expect your shell to look pretty much the same as any other terminal.

On the other hand, while adding a GPU brings many advantages, it's not without its drawbacks. For example, you may notice a slight delay in boot time on dual-GPU systems, such as laptops, which wouldn't occur with a more traditional device. This isn't common, but it can happen, as explained in the Kitty FAQ.

Of course, a GPU-accelerated terminal also requires a GPU to run from the start. In most cases, even integrated graphics will offer enough power to handle this workload without a hitch. But if you're using a very old laptop, you may want to stick with your desktop's default terminal app.

We tend to think about frame rates for games and other visually intensive software. With text, until recently, smooth motion wasn't at the top of the list of priorities. Given how often devices sit idle, this was especially true for terminal applications.

Because of this, many traditional terminal applications don't even scroll at the screen's refresh rate. Some older terminal applications default to 30 frames per second, even if the monitor can support a higher refresh rate. This is usually configurable, but it's still an odd default setting.

GPU-accelerated terminals update with the screen in most cases and almost always refresh more smoothly. This means scrolling back through your command history feels smoother. 😌

While this may improve your overall terminal experience, so far we haven't seen what GPU-accelerated terminals can offer in terms of pure speed. For that, we'll need to take a closer look at what happens when you run a command with a lot of output. 📈 A laptop on top of school books, with the Linux mascot wearing a graduation cap next to it.

Faster performance overall ⚡

Two things happen in a terminal when you run a command: the command you typed is executed, and the output is displayed in the terminal. These actions often happen so quickly that we consider them effectively instantaneous, but they are two distinct actions that occur in series or parallel.

This is another area where GPU-accelerated terminals can save you a bit of time. For commands that generate a lot of output (think any command with the flags -v either --verbose), the terminal's output rate can be a bottleneck for the command. This is because the command doesn't appear to complete until it has finished printing its output.

GPU-accelerated terminals, for reasons we've already discussed, can display this text much faster than traditional software terminals. The faster the output prints, the faster the command completes. 💨

You can test this by simply running the command find in your root directory, as follows:

find /

Screenshot of Alacritty and Konsole printing the output of the find command.

When running this command in Alacritty compared to the (typically quite efficient) KDE Konsole, the command completed significantly faster in Alacritty, even though I ran it after the Konsole command. Typically, you'll only save a second or two. While this is nice, the performance boost from faster terminal output is rarely the reason people switch to a GPU-accelerated terminal. ⏱️

GPU terminals offload work from the CPU 🧠

Finally, any demand a GPU-accelerated terminal is making on the GPU means it's not making that demand on the CPU. This difference may be small in many cases, but if you're compiling a large package, for example, you'll want to give that process as much CPU time as possible. ⚙️

Of course, there are two sides to this as well. For more graphics-intensive terminal applications with flashy cursor effects or CRT-style blurring around text, this would use more CPU on a traditional terminal. By relying on the GPU, even with integrated graphics, these terminals can unleash a bit more fun in the presentation department, without making you sacrifice speed. 🎈

GPU-powered terminal apps to try 🗂️

Now that you know some of the advantages of GPU-accelerated terminals, how do you find them in a sea of Linux terminal emulators? There are many popular options, including GhostTTY, which we have already mentioned. 🎉

Screenshot of selecting a theme for the Kitty terminal.

Kitty It's a feature-rich option, with support for integrated tabs and windows, support for graphics and font ligatures, and threaded rendering for minimal latency. The terminal is highly configurable, although the configuration file—written in Python—may be intimidating for some. Fortunately, if you're just looking to change the theme, you can do so easily with the command kitten themes which includes.

Another popular option is Alacritty, which focuses less on features and more on pure speed. Out of the box, the device is fast and lightweight, but you can configure it to have more features, at least to a certain extent. For example, you won't find tabs or splits, nor are there any plans to add them.

If you try any of these, or any other GPU-accelerated terminal, and find it's your new favorite, it's easy to change your default terminal. Our guide to changing the default terminal in Ubuntu should point you in the right direction on various distributions. 🔄

A laptop running Ubuntu, displaying the manual for a terminal command.

In conclusion, GPU-accelerated terminals represent a significant evolution in the command line user experience 🚀, offering smoother scrolling, higher refresh rates, and faster text display than traditional terminals.

Although at first glance they do not differ much in appearance 👀, their ability to free up CPU load and even take advantage of integrated graphics makes them valuable tools for users looking for optimize overall performance, especially in tasks with extensive output 📈.

While they may have some limitations, such as a slight startup delay on dual-GPU systems 🖥️⚡, their benefits often outweigh these drawbacks.

Popular options such as Kitty and Alacritty They offer different approaches to leveraging this technology, adapting to diverse needs and preferences 🎯.

In short, incorporating a GPU-accelerated terminal can significantly improve performance. efficiency and fluidity from your daily work on Linux, making the console experience faster and more enjoyable ⚡💻.

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GPU-accelerated terminals deliver faster text and smoother scrolling on Linux, freeing up CPU power and improving your productivity 💻⚡✨

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