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Alacritty: A GPU-Accelerated Terminal for Linux

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Alacritty is a blazing fast, GPU-accelerated terminal emulator for Linux — and in this guide, I’ll show you how to install and configure Alacritty step-by-step.

If you’re looking to upgrade your Linux terminal setup, this tutorial walks through everything you need to know: what makes Alacritty different, how its configuration works, and how to customize it. Whether you’re new to Linux or refining your terminal environment, this complete Alacritty setup guide will get you up and running quickly.

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🔗 Video-Specific Links
Official Blog Post for this Video (code, etc) ➜ https://www.learnlinux.tv/?p=6500
Check out Alacritty ➜ https://alacritty.org

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🕐 Time Codes

00:00 – Getting Started with Alacritty (Fast Terminal Setup Guide)
01:10 – What Is Alacritty? How Does it Differ From Terminal Emulators?
03:00 – How Alacritty Configuration Works
03:31 – How to Install Alacritty on Linux (Step-by-Step)
05:03 – Live Demo: Installing Alacritty on Linux
05:54 – Support Learn Linux TV (Linux Merch & Resources)
07:03 – Configuring Alacritty Like a Pro (Themes, Fonts & Tweaks)

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#Linux #Alacritty #TerminalEmulator #OpenSource #LinuxTutorial

20 Comments

@vezrien 7 months ago

Finally a terminal that can put my 5090 to use!

@mathieuberthalay21 7 months ago

Thank you very much for your video 🤩

@rogerhuston8287 5 months ago

I love the sudden flashes to light mode brower windows after longer dark mode viewing. Keeps folks on their toes.

@kash1222 7 months ago

Used alacritty, but it's a bit heavy on memory. Switched to the Foot terminal, which is very much similar, but easier on your RAM.

@Mark_Point 7 months ago

I've always just whatever came with my distro. Heard about this quite often so must be a reason why. I'll give it a go.

@Deus-lo-Vuilt 5 months ago

Genial, la probaré

@aliancemd 7 months ago

I understand that it’s not applicable to everybody but I like the fact that it’s written in Rust, which makes it very easy to make an LTO+PGO+BOLT build of it, trained(PGO && BOLT) against my most used tools, on my environment - I run the build script every 1-4 weeks.
There are plenty of good GPU accelerated terminals now - currently, Alacritty still performs the best on my machines, so I stick to it because of that, otherwise, not very feature rich

@penguin2137 7 months ago

i've used kitty for a few years, but i switched to alacritty fairly recently after discovering i use only a fraction of kitty's potential.
to be honest, the only thing i miss from kitty are the font ligatures, the rest can be set in any other ways.
i think it's very nice, i don't think i'll go back to kitty unless something really unexpected happens.

@jonathandasilva6822 7 months ago

The good old Konsole is unbeatable.

@Shragenator 7 months ago

Config file is a big upside for me! I use a version controlled set of config files that i can import with a bash script for my setup on debian

@YannMetalhead 4 months ago

Good video.

@nadtz 7 months ago

For programs like rmpc and yazi alacritty doesn't display everything (generally images) correctly so I've moved to kitty as my 'main' but I have some stuff set up with alacritty + tmux that I haven't bothered moving over to kitty. Works fine for those tasks.

@therealslimaddy 7 months ago

there is an alacritty-appimage to be used across any distros

@fosekfoefhbjgk 1 month ago

accelerationism respect

@BakedMelon 7 months ago

idk about alacritty never used it. i use kitty on a daily basis maybe ill give it a try

@Shragenator 7 months ago

How well does this play with emacs?

@psi4j 7 months ago (edited)

I’ve never felt speed was a problem with any terminal I’ve ever used. Tabs and splits AND tmux are all unnecessary if you use a tiling WM like Hyprland or scrolling WM like Niri.

@HerrFreese 7 months ago

I have some problems wenn using ssh to servers (e.g. bash on Open Media Vault). I don't understand it, but as far as I read Alacritty doesn't emulate somethings ("xterm"?). Did anyone els have that problem? If using tmux on the server the problem disappears.

@leandrojaramillo646 7 months ago

Good video, not for me but it's a great Terminal Emulator. I'm team Kitty

@krassiem1206 7 months ago

Many companies to this day ignore the basics. I loved Linux from the very beginning partially because it worked just great without much RAM and partially because one didn't need a mouse. Also, the chance to get an available Linux desktop were dozen times better 😅
These mouse devices were problematic in the computer lab decades ago, believe it or not...