# st (suckless terminal)

10 Hacker News commenters recommended st (suckless terminal) and 1 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 7 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Fast, lightweight, hackable terminal that starts instantly and uses little RAM. It is minimal: no scrolling or tabs, so features come from patches.

## Why people recommend it

- Fast with low memory use (4 comments): "It is fast enough for my purposes and does just about exactly what I want and not more." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50271743)) "no gpu, no cpu spikes, uses barely any ram and still feels snappier" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47212789)) "It starts instantly, uses ~10mb of Ram and has almost zero latency." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48103111))
- Extended with community patches (3 comments): "made so many modifications to st, dwm and such it feels like home" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48005991)) "`st` with patches to add sixel support" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45804963)) "I ran patched st and it was great" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47212256))
- Simple, hackable codebase (2 comments): "made so many modifications to st, dwm and such it feels like home" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48005991)) "Because it really is a simple, hackable codebase." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45804847))
- Set up once, rarely changed (2 comments): "It is fast enough for my purposes and does just about exactly what I want and not more." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50271743)) "I've configured my st once and haven't touched that build for years." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47985837))

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