 So many moons ago and by many moons I mean a couple years when I first started this channel my favorite terminal emulator was termite and I would have Gone to battle for that terminal emulator that thing was amazing it was my absolute favorite and It was just one of those things where I would not even hear of switching away from it. I made videos about it I like made probably four videos about it how amazing termite was and Then termite died So what's it got to do your favorite terminal emulator dies and you have to find something different now Termite is actually still around. It's just not being developed anymore So I could have theoretically still used it But using a project that is just not being developed anymore doesn't make a lot of sense to me when I'm doing what I do So I had to find something different and at the time I made a video how I was going to switch to alacrity and I was very Hesitant about alacrity because I thought that it was overhyped like every Linux youtuber and their mother uses Alacrity like it's not even funny every single one of them use alacrity a few of them use kitty But the vast majority of them use alacrity and I just thought it was like a meme You know I mean like everybody at one point was using I3 and then it moved to BS PWM And then it was DWM and then the new thing now is hyperland You know, there's like a scenario in the Linux community where everyone just starts using the same stuff until it literally becomes a meme And then they move on to the next one and I thought that that was alacrity So I was very hesitant to switch to it because I don't really care to use something that just Happens to be popular because it's a meme at the end of the day however, I did end up switching to alacrity and I've been using it now for a couple years and The thing is is that two years has just flown by and I was thinking about it today I haven't had the interest in switching away from alacrity ever like even though I switched to it in protest Once I switched to it I had no interest and I still have no interest in switching away from it I've tried a couple other terminal emulators and they have been very Meh, they've just not been nearly as good as alacrity is so what I thought I would do today is talk about why I think alacrity is the absolute best terminal emulator you can try Now the first reason is that it allows you to change the configuration file on the fly And what I mean by that is that if I use my alacrity changer script, which is called l changer like so I can actually choose from any number of themes that I have installed now Obviously, this is something that I did. This is not something that alacrity has built in But it is only able to be used because of a feature that alacrity has and that is that it allows you to update its Config while things are running So let's just say I choose a random theme here called like cobalt like so and as you can see the Theme of the terminal changed right away. I can do it again and choose a different one. Let's choose I don't know one. That's really light like there that one's completely different. You can see that it updated Automatically now, like I said that script is something that I wrote I didn't make a video about that by the way I'll try to link that in the video description But the point is is that because alacrity allows you to do this I've been able to create a script that allows you to Change between different themes all those things by the way came from arts craft So I can't actually take credit from for those things some of them are mine But the vast majority of them came from arts craft But the point is is that I have all these things and I can just change between them It also has allowed me to create my i3 script That allows me to change both my i3 poly bar and a few other things all with a script So let me show you that so here are all my i3 themes. I can choose between any of these. Let's choose. Oh I don't know How about adaptive this one here is a arts craft theme that I've translated into an i3 theme and It looks like this and as you can see alacrity changed right along with it because that's something that I was able to do through a script So I think that that is probably the absolute number one reason why I like alacrity But it's not the only one if you take a look at the alacrity configuration foul You'll see the probably the only thing about alacrity that I don't like and that is that it's configured in yaml and yaml is a Syntax that I just don't care for at all and I don't actually know anybody who does like it to be honest with you And the reason why it's so bad is simply because it requires you to be very consistent on Spacing so if you start out the file with two spaces or one tab or whatever it is You have to kind of have all that stuff in line exactly the same. Otherwise, you're gonna get an error So that's the reason why I don't like yaml But outside of that the Configurability of alacrity is amazing So one of the things that I learned the other day that you can do is you can use the import function to import other files So this would be similar to doing something in like polybar or the i3 file where you include a file Which basically imports it into this file and this again has allowed me to Create all those themes and kind of change them on the go and you could do other things as well And and it allows you to clean up your configuration file as well So that's another reason why it's really cool, but outside of that the rest of the configuration file is very Well done There's a ton of options for you to choose and there's a ton of things that you can alter if you want including key bindings The padding all that kind of stuff now That's not necessarily unusual for a terminal, but it's all right here They also have really good documentation So if you go to their website, you'll see that they have a really nice set of documentation Therefore you'd use and their default configuration file comes with a lot of the stuff that you'll just want out of the box I've deleted most of the stuff because I don't care of about creating custom key bindings or anything like that I don't usually use any key bindings out inside the terminal So I'm not that big of a fan of the key bindings But you can alter them and all that stuff is there by default and you can just kind of see how they do it now Another thing that is really cool about a Lackardy and it's not unique to a Lackardy But it's definitely the first experience I had with this functionality and that is the ability to set a custom class So if we actually open up the man page here we'll be able to see that there's an option here called dash dash class and Basically what that does is it allows you to For example create a key binding that would open up a terminal that has a specific class So so for example if I go into my i3 configuration file like so you'll see that there's a spot here Where I do something like this now ignore this part here That's just telling it to check to see if there's something opening and close it But the the part that I'm talking about is right here and basically what this does is it allows me to open up a Terminal that has that class So this is really helpful when it comes to something like scratch pads where I want to open up a terminal Using a certain key binding associated with a class of terminal that is running an application So for example ranger, I can do super c and that would bring up ranger in a scratch pad and that's really only possible Because of the ability to assign this terminal a class called ranger and it doesn't mean that I can't open up ranger somewhere else I can still do that but that would still have the class of a Lackardy Which is the main class of the terminal But this also allows me to do things like open up my music player Just like so with a scratch pad this this terminal here has a class of NCM PCPP actually I'm sure that's not right. I would have never used the name. It's emmy M. U. S. That's better There's no way I was actually going to use the name But the point is is that the I was able to assign that class and that means that I can use a Dedicated key binding to just bring up that class instead of bringing up a terminal and then having to open up the music player Or whatever it happens to be again It's not necessarily unique to a Lackardy, but it was my first exposure to that type of functionality and It's amazing because especially if you are the type to do things like I do with scratch pads Or you want to assign key bindings to a certain window and being able to assign a class Specifically for that window is really nice So add on top of all of those features Lackardy, it's also astonishingly fast one of the things that I thought Would be a problem would be that it would be slower than termite was because termite was a very fast terminal emulator And I was very used to it running all of my commands very quickly now I don't do anything complex in the terminal that really Require something that is GPU is accelerated But I was still quite worried that Lackardy would take away the speed that I was kind of used to But because it is GPU accelerated and it's written in rust it hasn't slowed me down at all. It's still very very fast it's also been very stable and Because it's so customizable. It's one of those things that just hasn't really Tempted me to use anything different now when it comes to alternatives that I've tried I've tried kitty and kitty I think is probably like the main competitor in this space in terms of like customizable Terminal emulators now. There are obviously other ones out there that are more gooey centric like XFC for terminal and gnomes terminal and Terminator and stuff like that those things are all a little bit different and that you configure them through a graphical interface for Terminals where you do all your configuration in a configuration file Kitty is the other big one in the space and I've tried it and I don't like it And one of the reasons why I don't like it is because their default Configuration file has all of their documentation in it like all like three thousand lines of it and it's so hard to parse Especially if you have folds enabled in Vems So if you view the kitty configuration file in them with folds enabled all their stuff is folded And if you don't know what a fold is in them I don't blame me because I didn't either when I first saw the kitty configuration file and saw that stuff Compact into just lines of stuff. I had no clue what it was and or how to Unfold it like so if you've ever used them before you probably have come across a fold before and Unless you have used folds in the past you probably have no clue what the default Keybinding is to unfold something. I still don't know what it is I had to look it up every single time now if you View the configuration file outside of them like you view it in nano or micro or something like that You're not gonna have to deal with folds and I've come across situations where it opens up in vim just fine If you don't have folds enabled So that was one of the things that immediately immediately turned me off from it and then add on top of that all the documentation that is there now I'm all for great documentation I seriously think that it's one of the most essential pieces of any project In fact, I would go so far as to say that it maybe is the most essential part of any project If you are writing a complex piece of software and you don't have good documentation It's not a very good project that being said of course I don't think that it should all be shelved into a configuration file Now maybe they've changed this since the last time I used it and they've moved it to the man page And that's where it should be But when I tried it all of the documentation was right there And what that does is it makes it hard to see the actual settings So each setting had the full explanation of what that setting was right on top of it And it kind of all blended together and that just made it kind of hard to configure now I'm not here to bash kitty kitty is actually a fairly fine terminal It's just not a lacquer despite my problems with the lacquer to config in terms of it being written in yaml I still find a superior Configuration file to kitty simply because it's simpler. It just is the configuration file if you want the documentation You go find the documentation and I highly recommend you do go find the documentation It will show you all the neat things that a lacquerty can do But they don't cram it all into the config file And if they did it would make it a worse configuration file now all that being said kitty does have some Things going for it that a lacquerty doesn't kitty has things that can be plugged into it I'm not sure what they call them. I think I don't know why I think they call them kittens Do they call them kittens? I might have to I might be just making that up But they call them something like that and you can use them as that kind of a plug-in system to make your Terminal emulator do things some of them will help you with productivity. Some of them are just kind of frivolous things And that's a great system to have a lacquer. You as far as I know doesn't I have a plug-in system at all I've never really looked for one I don't think it does but the point is is that you know, it doesn't have all that stuff on it So if you're looking for more of an extensible Terminal emulator, maybe kitty is a better option for you but if you're just looking for one that is stable and very configurable out of the box and Has a live updating feature, which is again, I can't even begin to tell you how amazing that part is Then a lacquerty is definitely the terminal for you I think it is the absolute best out there and I've tried most of them So if you have thoughts on a lacquerty, you can leave those comments in the comment section below I really do appreciate all the stuff you guys leave down there. I do enjoy our conversations You can follow me on Twitter at the Linux cast You can follow me on Macedon or Odyssey those links will be in the video description along with all my other social media stuff If you would be kind enough to hit that like button, it really would help the channel I do appreciate that as well if you haven't subscribed yet You should do so because I release Linux content pretty much every single day of the week some of it's good Some of it's bad some of it's worse than bad some of it's better than good It really varies, you know depends on what the topic is sometimes, you know Have a bad day, but anyways, if you haven't hit the subscribe button You should definitely do so you can support me on patreon at patreon.com Slash the link cast and if you are interested in doing that I now offer an annual subscription that you can Select upon checkout and that'll allow you to save 10% but thanks everybody who does support me on patreon on YouTube I truly do appreciate it. Thanks to you guys so damn much without you the channel This would not be the way it is. So thank you for your support. Thanks everybody for watching. I'll see you next time