# Rio terminal

10 Hacker News commenters recommended Rio terminal and 2 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 7 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** People recommend Rio for its simpler, more capable window model, instant launch and sixel support. The most common caveat is subtle usability issues that become too much for some users.

## Why people recommend it

- Simpler and more capable than X (4 comments): "All of Rio in Plan9 is 6K lines of code and it’s a more powerful display protocol and window manager" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46489305)) "Inferno's version of Rio which is a lot more comprehensible." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46731927)) "Rio and its predecesor in Unix v8/v10 did it better than X." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47556921))
- Windows with text streams and namespaces (3 comments): "You can freely resize the 9front's rio window manager's windows running rc" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47064693)) "With rio windows I get an actual text stream to copy and paste" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47074744)) "windows under plan9/9front have their own namespace" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47555448))
- Instant launch with sixel support (2 comments): "The launch is perceptually instant on all my machines, and it does support sixels and all that nonsense." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50266642)) "Rio can use different fonts just fine, you know." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47065006))
- Adopted as daily terminal (2 comments): "Rio is already designed and working." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47461058)) "I'm now on rio and ghostty." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49621640))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Ghostty](https://hackerapproved.com/p/ghostty.md): 401 recommend
- [Termux](https://hackerapproved.com/p/termux.md): 188 recommend
- [iTerm2](https://hackerapproved.com/p/iterm2.md): 95 recommend
- [Warp terminal](https://hackerapproved.com/p/warp-terminal.md): 84 recommend
- [Kitty terminal emulator](https://hackerapproved.com/p/kitty.md): 79 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Rio terminal", https://hackerapproved.com/p/rio/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).