GNOME Terminal
Shares rank 31 of 40 terminal emulators by recommenders
Recommended as a capable default terminal that works well for everyday use and is free. Critics most often call it slow or bloated.
Recommended as a capable default terminal that works well for everyday use and is free. Critics most often call it slow or bloated.
16 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 6
- criticize it
- 10
- approval share
- 38%
Recommended in 5 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 6 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 0.6 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 5 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Solid default for everyday use
“I quickly install GNOME terminal for real use.”
Comment from 11 May 2026 in “Linux Terminal Memory Usage” “I prefer tilix and the default gnome terminal”
Comment from 28 Oct 2026 in “Ghostty 1.4”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Slow or bloated performance
“xterm will be faster than gnome-terminal, for example, because it's not bloated trash”
Comment from 15 Apr 2026 in “Fixing a 20-year-old bug in Enlightenment E16” “others like gnome-terminal were too slow”
Comment from 6 Aug 2026 in “I'm switching my phone from Android to Linux” Missing or removed features
“Then it got moved down to 6th item, then in the newer versions removed completely.”
Comment from 7 Jan 2026 in “Gnome dev gives fans of Linux's middle-click paste the middle finger” “Gnome terminal doesn't support this currently”
Comment from 4 Dec 2025 in “Ghostty is now non-profit” Doesn't work for some users
“Gnome Terminal and Termux in Ubuntu 24.04 were unusable even with 1000 hacks.”
Comment from 1 Apr 2026 in “Claude Code Unpacked : A visual guide” “gnome terminal doesn't work”
Comment from 9 Jun 2026 in “Life is too short for a slow terminal”
Other terminal emulators people recommend
The four most recommended other terminal emulators, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ghostty | 401 | 158 | 72% | 12 | 3 mo22 owners | Approved |
| Termux | 188 | 31 | 86% | 12 | 1 yr6 owners | Approved |
| iTerm2 | 95 | 69 | 58% | 12 | 10 yrs4 owners | — |
| Warp terminal | 84 | 86 | 49% | 11 | 1 yr5 owners | — |
| GNOME TerminalThis page | 6 | 10 | 38% | 5 | — | — |
What people said
16 of the 17 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“I prefer tilix and the default gnome terminal”
“others like gnome-terminal were too slow”
“gnome terminal doesn't work”
“After switching away from GNOME Terminal + Zsh”
“I quickly install GNOME terminal for real use.”
“gnome-terminal shows remarkably well in this test”
“all have slight variations between simple things like rendering and more important things like hotkeys”
“xterm will be faster than gnome-terminal, for example, because it's not bloated trash”
“Gnome Terminal and Termux in Ubuntu 24.04 were unusable even with 1000 hacks.”
“Those huge menus and tabs on GNOME terminal eventually became skinny with a good deal of CSS and AI”
“Its scroll is utterly broken outside of VS Code for me”
“Then it got moved down to 6th item, then in the newer versions removed completely.”
“very close the the first start of GNOME Terminal”
“Gnome terminal doesn't support this currently”
“gnome-terminal is GTK 3 last I checked”
“gnome-terminal still writes out its scrollback history to the filesystem, potentially on-disk and not just tmpfs”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.