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#+TITLE: Terminal Emulator Alternatives — 2026 Evaluation
#+DATE: 2026-06-10
#+DESCRIPTION: foot vs the 2026 field for pure-Wayland Hyprland. Verdict: stay with foot.
* Current state
foot 1.26.x daily driver on Hyprland (pure Wayland), themed via INI files in the dotfiles theme system, BerkeleyMono Nerd Font 13pt, tmux for sessions, vterm in Emacs for much of the shell work. ptyxis installed but secondary.
* Field
| terminal | wayland-native | graphics protocol | config | maintenance 2026 | notable |
|-----------+-------------------------+---------------------------------+-------------------------+-------------------------------------------------+----------------------------------------------------------|
| foot | yes, Wayland-only | sixel (no kitty gfx, no plans) | INI | active; 1.26.0 Mar 2026, commits May 2026 | lowest latency in 2026 benchmarks; server mode |
| ghostty | yes (GTK4, no XWayland) | kitty graphics + sixel | flat key=value file | very active; 1.3.0 Mar 2026, 6-mo cycle | fastest-growing project; scrollback search landed in 1.3 |
| kitty | yes (native Wayland) | kitty graphics (origin) | INI-ish + remote control| very active; 0.47.2 Jun 2026 | kitten ecosystem; kitty @ set-colors live theming |
| alacritty | yes (winit) | none (rejected) | TOML, live reload | maintained; 0.17.0 Apr 2026, maintenance mode | speed-only scope; no images, no tabs by design |
| wezterm | yes | kitty graphics + sixel + iTerm | Lua (scripted) | stagnant; last release Feb 2024, nightlies only | "is this abandoned?" issues open; spare-time project |
| ptyxis | yes (GTK4/libadwaita) | sixel only if VTE built with it | GSettings/GUI profiles | active; v50 for GNOME 50 / Ubuntu 26.04 | container-focused; config not file-based, hard to stow |
| rio | yes | sixel + iTerm images | TOML | active; 0.4.5 May 2026, still pre-1.0 | WebGPU renderer; sixel bugs still being fixed in 2026 |
* Analysis
ghostty is the only contender with a real case. It's pure Wayland on Hyprland (explicitly no XWayland), adds kitty graphics on top of sixel, has a flat declarative config that would slot into the existing theme system, and reloads config at runtime (keybind or SIGUSR2 since 1.2 — scriptable from set-theme). Maintenance is the best in the field. Against it: measured input latency is still behind foot in 2026 Wayland benchmarks, a config-reload bug clobbers OSC 10/11-set colors (#2795), and with tmux + vterm absorbing most terminal time, its tab/window features go unused.
kitty is the power-user option: kitty graphics protocol at the source, excellent font rendering, kitty @ set-colors is the best runtime theme-switching mechanism of the field. But it's heavier than foot, the single-maintainer style is opinionated, and most of its multiplexing features duplicate tmux. It earns its keep mainly if kitty-graphics-based file previews (yazi, etc.) become a daily need — sixel in foot already covers most of that.
alacritty and rio don't clear the bar: alacritty is foot minus sixel with no feature direction, and rio is pre-1.0 with sixel correctness fixes still landing in May 2026. wezterm is disqualified on maintenance — no tagged release since Feb 2024 with open "is this maintained?" issues. ptyxis stays a utility terminal: GSettings-based config can't be stowed or theme-switched from the dotfiles system, and sixel depends on the distro's VTE build.
foot itself stayed healthy: 1.26.0 in March 2026, steady commits, still the latency reference point for Wayland terminals. Colors swap at runtime via OSC 4/10/11 escapes, which is exactly the mechanism a set-theme script can drive across all live foot windows; new windows pick up the INI include.
* Verdict
Stay with foot. The workload (tmux + Emacs/vterm) uses a terminal as a thin, fast pty host, which is precisely what foot is optimized for — every contender's differentiators (tabs, splits, scripting, scrollback search) are already owned by tmux and Emacs. foot wins or ties on every dimension that matters here: latency (wins), Wayland purity (ties ghostty), INI theming (fits the existing system), maintenance (healthy). The one genuine gap is kitty graphics protocol, which dnkl has said foot won't grow. The answer changes if (a) kitty-graphics-dependent tooling (image-heavy file managers, plotting in-terminal) becomes daily workflow — then ghostty is the pick over kitty for its lighter config and Hyprland-native behavior — or (b) foot's maintenance lapses, which 2026 shows no sign of.
* Sources
- https://codeberg.org/dnkl/foot/releases
- https://codeberg.org/dnkl/foot/issues/481 (kitty graphics: no plans)
- https://ghostty.org/docs/install/release-notes
- https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty/issues/2795 (reload clobbers OSC 10/11)
- https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty/discussions/4280 (runtime theme switching)
- https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/changelog/
- https://github.com/alacritty/alacritty/releases
- https://github.com/wezterm/wezterm/issues/7451 ("no longer updated?")
- https://github.com/raphamorim/rio/releases
- https://gitlab.gnome.org/chergert/ptyxis
- https://github.com/moktavizen/terminal-benchmark (Wayland latency comparisons)
- https://dev.to/shrsv/state-of-linux-terminal-emulators-in-2026-1gh5
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