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points by ssernikk 4 days ago | 0 comments

Not OP, but I've moved back to kitty because of ghostty horrendous startup time on linux

That's a one time cost though isn't it? It's a tradeoff, but once it is booted it's blazing though.

When I use the terminal, I spawn and kill a lot of instances for quick tasks. Having a longer startup times is definitely noticeable.

[–] idoubtit 4 days ago

My login session starts a background ghostty instance, then each new window is almost instant when I press my i3 shortcut.

This process is documented with systemd, but it's not a requirement, a plain xsessionrc could work similarly: https://ghostty.org/docs/linux/systemd

[–] tasuki 4 days ago

> I spawn and kill a lot of instances for quick tasks.

Why? Do you open a new browser window when you want to visit a website?

[–] xigoi 4 days ago

I do whenever I want two websites displayed next to each other or when I want to have them in separate workspaces, which is pretty often.

[–] porridgeraisin 3 days ago

Yes actually. Ctrl+Alt+b opens a new browser window quickly and I go somewhere. I have it faster in muscle memory than switching to browser and ctrl+t and then opening whatever.

Same with terminal. My terminals (xfce4-terminal or kitty -1) both open so instantly that I can ctrl+alt+t and even while typing at high speeds, the next character is entered into the terminal.

I can type the below sequence of keys at high speed (realistic example that OCRs clipboard image):

  ctrl+alt+t vpng | ocr | ctxt alt+tab

without risking the startup time swallowing my `vp` keys

And yes, I disable animations for any kind of window switching mechanism including alt-tab/worksapce switch

At any rate, I believe ghostty has the same single instance mode equivalent.

[–] mkingston 4 days ago

In case you're not aware, there exists:

    ghostty +new-window

[–] sgarland 4 days ago

tmux?

[–] Zambyte 4 days ago

I figured that was an issue with the appimage for me. Did you install it a different way that you ran into that issue?

[–] cptmurphy 4 days ago

also slow startup times, archlinux, official repo package

[–] ulfbert_inc 4 days ago

I'd say 100-200 ms is not horrendous but it can be much better without giving up on libghostty-vt :) check out Monstar.

Now, Monstar has a bizarre issue (at least in my setup) where it displays blank instead of capital A when used with Fixedsys Excelsior, for some reason. But hey it starts in under 10ms.

edit:typo