# xterm

19 Hacker News commenters recommended xterm and 7 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 10 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 18 years (3 owners). It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Recommended for its accurate DEC VT terminal emulation, light memory use and low latency. The most common caveat is that it requires Xorg.

## Why people recommend it

- Light on memory and resources (3 comments): "It's reasonably lightweight, runs and is packaged absolutely everywhere" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48972604)) "I'm using 1GB with TWM, DIllo, TUI tools, XTerm, MuPDF and the like." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46152388)) "it's very small and works fine" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46193386))
- Preferred over other terminals (3 comments): "it's honestly the only usable terminal, none other has stuck with me" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48101029)) "I'll happily keep using alacritty, konsole and xterm, thanks." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45901119)) "larger displays and xterm felt like such a liberation" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47390130))
- Low latency and snappy startup (2 comments): "Starting it with the wm keybinds is as snappy as opening a new Firefox tab." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49150353)) "it's got the lowest latency by quite a bit" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47207215))
- Accurate DEC VT terminal emulation (2 comments): "has to pass a suite of conformance tests that actually check its emulation of DEC VT series terminals" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46815220)) "just old vt340 support in XTerm" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48094058))

## What people warn about

- Requires Xorg display system (2 comments): "xterm shouldn't require Xorg. It should be agnostic to display system" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46795385)) "Want to run xterm? Requires Xorg." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46794441))

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