[HN Gopher] Terminal Latency on Windows (2024)
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Terminal Latency on Windows (2024)
Author : bariumbitmap
Score : 77 points
Date : 2025-11-11 18:07 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (chadaustin.me)
(TXT) w3m dump (chadaustin.me)
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Does it still pause scrolling and stop whatever's running if you
| click on the window or press a key? That's one big reason why I
| still live in a plain old DOS box. It didn't appear that the
| Windows terminal developers had ever heard of ctrl-s.
| hobs wrote:
| That's called QuickEdit Mode and you have been able to turn
| that off for decades (and installing the new terminal fixes
| that too.)
|
| Otherwise click the top left icon, go to settings, uncheck
| QuickEdit.
| alexchantavy wrote:
| Dang, I've never heard of anyone who actually _wanted_ that
| behavior haha, I've had so much wasted time in school projects
| where I thought something was running but it wasn't because I
| had selected text in cmd.exe haha.
| 1718627440 wrote:
| It stops running? I thought it just stops the output.
| shigawire wrote:
| If you are waiting for the output as an indication that a
| task completed and you never see that output you may think
| the task is still running but it is actually done.
|
| Has happened to me quite a few times.
| larkost wrote:
| I am not sure that if it actually stops the program, but it
| does at least stop programs from printing, so for anything
| that gives feedback on stderr/stdout you are at least
| pausing the main thread. I have a mostly-non-threaded
| program that this happens to, and it does not continue to
| send messages to other systems until I un-pause it.
| thermalmotion wrote:
| Any chance of getting native support for Serial (DB9/RS232)
| communication in Windows Terminal? Would love to use it but I'm
| still using PuTTY and HyperTerminal.
| digitalDM wrote:
| I recommend Tera term.
| https://github.com/TeraTermProject/teraterm/releases
| opello wrote:
| As much as I like PuTTY the ergonomics for "monitor this port
| as I plug/unplug the USB-to-Serial adapter" are so much
| better in TeraTerm.
| GeorgeTirebiter wrote:
| Is there something lacking in PuTTY ?
| zamadatix wrote:
| I think it has been discussed but not implemented yet. In the
| meantime, tools like
| https://github.com/fasteddy516/SimplySerial give what you are
| looking for instead of those alternative GUI tools.
| jcgl wrote:
| Is there not a suitable CLI or TUI client for Windows that can
| simply be called from within Windows Terminal? Honest question.
| I just know that on Linux, it'd be really weird to ask for my
| terminal emulator to embed a serial client rather than call
| e.g. screen or minicom from my shell.
| PKop wrote:
| (2024)
| 0x1ch wrote:
| Another aspect of this is which pipeline is in use for the GPU
| accelerated terminals. *WezTerm on Windows for example, specific
| rendering issues occur with default NVIDIA settings related to
| DXGI.
|
| You will never interact with this pipeline if using the Web GPU
| vulkan renderer, which has its own issues. I personally
| experience some form of memory leak / latency when working in
| terminals that have been open for a 'good' amount of time.
| semiinfinitely wrote:
| whats the point of using the terminal on a gaming OS?
| princevegeta89 wrote:
| Windows is not really just a gaming OS, at least after WSL was
| launched. Development experience using Windows Terminal + WSL
| has been pretty great when I did it 3 years ago - I can only
| imagine it being better today.
|
| Also note that the cost of Windows machines is half the price
| of their Mac counterparts, even with the specs doubled.
|
| For many folks Windows is an all-round multipurpose platform
| (gaming included) and they wouldn't want to invest in other
| machines just for doing development work, so they stick to it
| as their main OS. Yes we know of the horrible bloat, tracking
| and privacy invasion that the OS does to us, but many people
| tend to just ignore it and move on.
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| Yeah My company requires Windows. windows Terminal + WSL at
| least makes development bearable.
| eptcyka wrote:
| Why not run Windows in a VM?
| skrebbel wrote:
| You're right but you're responding to a troll.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| > Yes we know of the horrible bloat, tracking and privacy
| invasion that the OS does to us, but many people tend to just
| ignore it and move on.
|
| Or in the case of enterprises, Windows gets controlled and
| managed by a (hopefully) competent IT team or enterprise
| desktop group, and with LTSC versions Microsofts give them
| the tools to strip the bloat, tracking, and most of the
| privacy invasions (to then be replaced with corporate privacy
| invasions in a lot of cases).
|
| Point being, Windows as an enterprise user desktop is a whole
| different beast from Windows on the laptop mom and dad just
| bought from Best Buy.
|
| HN lives in a macOS/Linux bubble, but outside of SV it's a
| Windows world still. So much of the world runs on Windows in
| places that you wouldn't even expect to see Windows. And with
| enterprise purchasing agreements, you can get some good deals
| on bulk laptop purchases that you aren't getting from Apple.
| $1,000 or less per 32GB of RAM laptop, depending on how many
| you are buying. I've seen bulk purchases as low as
| $700/laptop for enterprises that buy thousands at a time for
| scheduled refreshes. You're not going to be able to buy
| everyone a MacBook Pro for that pricing.
|
| Windows remains one of the best general purpose OSes for
| generic office worker productivity, and I don't see that
| changing anytime soon unless Microsoft really fucks it up
| with whatever Copilot garbage they are doing.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| > LTSC versions
|
| Microsoft consultants very actively discourage the use of
| LTSC for... "reasons".
|
| Translation: "It hurts our KPIs if our telemetry starts
| falling off and we can't push Minecraft and AI updates to
| as many desktops at will!"
| gruez wrote:
| The quite sensible reason is that LTSC doesn't contain
| the windows store, and as a result a bunch of driver apps
| don't work because they moved to using UWP apps (eg.
| realtek audio console). Not to mention that you'll
| eventually get weird compatibility issues because you'll
| eventually be running a windows version 5-10 years old,
| whereas most devs assume you're using be using the normal
| versions which are at most 2 years out of date. All of
| these issues can be worked around if you're sufficiently
| technically inclined, but people who are hiring
| "Microsoft consultants" probably aren't.
| 1718627440 wrote:
| But you can install it?
| gruez wrote:
| >All of these issues can be worked around [...]
| jiggawatts wrote:
| I recommend LTSC for terminal services environments like
| Azure Virtual Desktop, where driver issues just aren't a
| problem.
|
| Windows LTSC has semi annual updates, the same as Windows
| Server. Speaking of which, that's essentially what it is:
| a cut-down version of the Server Desktop Experience with
| pretty much the same defaults and capabilities.
|
| Microsoft could implement App Store support for LTSC (and
| Served), they simply choose not to. It's telling that
| this isn't a problem in practice.
| gruez wrote:
| >Windows LTSC has semi annual updates, the same as
| Windows Server
|
| You mean biennial? It definitely doesn't get updates
| twice a year:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_11_version_history
|
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/semiannual#English
|
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/biennial#English
| thewebguyd wrote:
| Microsoft "consultants" are are usually just license
| auditors in disguise. We ignore them, and I suggest
| everyone else do the same. They "helpfully" reach out and
| offer to optimize your infrastructure and spend. That
| 'optimization' is actually "let's make sure you bought
| all the CALs you were supposed to, and when you
| inevitably didn't, because we make our licensing
| confusing, we'll charge you extra and threaten legal
| action for non-compliance"
|
| Better to find a reputable VAR and get your licensing
| through them and don't ever deal with Microsoft directly.
| harvey9 wrote:
| My work laptop is Windows and IT have removed the bloatware
| but the desktop is still a shitshow. Clicking on a window
| in the taskbar doesn't even reliably bring it to the front.
| rawling wrote:
| I've noticed it seems windows aren't allowed to
| foreground themselves/each other anymore, which seems
| reasonable (anti click jacking?), but this includes VS
| not being able to foreground my diff tool when I diff
| something, and Outlook not being able to foreground
| itself when I double click the new mail envelope in the
| notification area.
|
| I also enjoy going to grab a maximised window by its
| title bar and somehow grabbing the window behind it.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| Yeah, windows is pretty aggressive with the focus
| stealing prevention (I believe GNOME on Linux is also
| working on something similar, hopefully with a better
| implementation).
|
| It seems to struggle with differentiating between what's
| a user initiated focus-steal and what's
| automated/originating from the app without user action.
|
| I'll take that over what existed before, which was any
| app could just open a window and give itself focus at any
| time.
| pinkgolem wrote:
| >Also note that the cost of Windows machines is half the
| price of their Mac counterparts, even with the specs doubled.
|
| Bullshit, MacBooks are one of the cheaper options for usable
| devices today. Esp in there entry segment.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Yeah. An M4 macbook air is about a grand.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| Now spec it with 32GB of RAM, and try to get a bulk
| discount for ordering 1,000 of them. Try to get the price
| of said 32GB M4 Airs down to ~$700/laptop or less.
|
| Not going to happen with Apple.
|
| No company that's big enough is paying sticker price for
| windows laptops.
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| We use WSL for development where I work.
|
| Sadly, the one problem with WSL(g) is graphical rendering. It
| can't handle DPI scaling properly at all (yes, even with
| experimental settings) and the result is blurriness, gigantic
| mouse cursor, clicks not registered where the cursor appears
| to be, or itty-bitty icons and UI that you can barely see.
|
| I can't stand that they haven't fixed it in all this time.
| flatline wrote:
| It has gotten better. The `vmmem` hyper-v process would
| regularly freeze up and require a reboot on my Windows 10
| work laptop. I've successfully run WSL for days/weeks
| without issue on Windows 11. As a tradeoff, I've had the
| Weston container freeze up and be unrecoverable without
| restarting WSL.
| ganelonhb wrote:
| What's the point of doing anything ever? Because we can, that's
| it. Some people happen to use Windows for things other than
| gaming (remarkably).
| theoldgreybeard wrote:
| Well, for one, if you develop games for said gaming OS you're
| probably doing it _on_ the gaming OS in question and would like
| the tools to be nice to use.
|
| Also it's not just a "gaming OS".
| dist-epoch wrote:
| What's the point on using the terminal on an artist OS?
| nasretdinov wrote:
| Well, at least it's beautiful on macOS! (Not really, but
| that's beyond the point :))
| debugnik wrote:
| In 2025 that would be iOS rather than macOS, several artists
| I know love Procreate.
| cadamsdotcom wrote:
| With the amount of work Windows seems to need just to use it -
| decrapification, bypassing account creation, constant vigilance
| that your changes aren't undone by Windows Update.. - it's also
| a gamified OS ;)
| epolanski wrote:
| I program on Windows every day.
|
| It's my go to machine, I also own a MBP m1 and an m3 max with
| 48 GBs, but my Windows desktop is by far the most capable
| machine of the three (a notebook cpu and ram, even the m3 max
| are still notebook hardware) and the OS I like the most for
| programming.
|
| I program mostly in WSL2, so essentially in Ubuntu, but the
| terminal lives as a Windows executable.
|
| MacOS is really a subpar development experience to me and it's
| plagued with issues, from very subpar docker support and
| performance to it's far from flawless experience on many
| languages I use regularly (e.g. Haskell) that are far from the
| Linux standard.
|
| I love it as a notebook though, great hardware and battery
| life, but I'm at home most of the days.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Docker Desktop app for macOS might be a shitshow, but Colima
| -- or, apparently, Orbstack which I'm excited to try --
| should make that moot.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| > MacOS is really a subpar development experience to me and
| it's plagued with issues, from very subpar docker support and
| performance to it's far from flawless experience on many
| languages I use regularly (e.g. Haskell) that are far from
| the Linux standard.
|
| Aside from that, the window management in macOS leaves a lot
| to be desired still without third party tools, and even with
| them it's not fantastic.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I love my macbook pro, but bugs & privacy
| issues aside with Windows, I'd prefer to just use it on my
| macbook's hardware. I've been full time on macOS since the M1
| air and I still can't grok the app v. window model macOS
| uses. I'm sure it made sense when workflows were centered
| around documents, but they aren't anymore, and over half the
| apps are just browsers. I prefer each instance to be
| standalone like Windows and Linux do it.
|
| Then again, I'm not a dev, I'm an IT manager. My day to day
| involves multiple browser windows each with many tabs,
| spreadsheets, meetings, & notetaking on my iPad, etc. macOS's
| workflow of "focus on one or two "apps" at a time" doesn't
| work for me. I'll stand by my statement that Windows is still
| the king of "general business productivity."
| yndoendo wrote:
| I program on Windows for work daily.
|
| You have to pay me to use Windows and Microsoft products.
|
| There are so many alternatives that have higher standards. I
| keep having regressive issues with Visual Studio. The OS
| quality has been continually degrading. Microsoft is even
| pushing to have a @microsoft.com account on their Windows
| embedded IoT variants. There should be no reason an embedded
| OS requires an online account nor that XBox and other useless
| features baked in.
|
| I wont event touch how bad the User Experience has become in
| their Office products and how much of their products have
| inconsistent key combinations. Ctrl+F ...
| bionsystem wrote:
| As an SRE I did most of my work from windows as almost all of
| my jobs required it (only one provided a working Ubuntu
| laptop). Mostly used it only for firefox and PuTTY. At home
| it was W10 + WSL or virtualbox but mostly used it for games
| initially and then browsing.
|
| BUT as from W11 which I tried for 11 minutes, I switched to
| Fedora and didn't look back. Everything felt buggy, start
| menu taking forever, buttons switching places, apps wouldn't
| start but then randomly would, and of course ads. I know
| there are debloat scripts around but didn't have the
| patience, I felt if I'm going to try a new OS I might as well
| try Linux before buying a Windows license.
|
| Now Linux has its issues, the occasional icon disappears,
| sometimes shutdown doesn't entirely shut down the machine and
| I have to power the machine down (electrically from my
| outlet), sometimes updates don't go through, and of course I
| miss excel and a couple other things (although I was far from
| a power user and OnlyOffice fits my needs). But it's still
| better and with KDE there is almost no config to get a
| similar "feel" as W10. Amusingly I actually use MORE apps now
| that I trust installing new stuff more.
|
| That said I would probably pay a premium to dual boot
| occasionally on a supported Windows OS without bloat,
| probably it would be my default boot even.
| d3Xt3r wrote:
| Servers, in corporate environments.
| binary132 wrote:
| presumably someone might want to write a game for it
| MisterTea wrote:
| A better question: why are we optimizing typewriter emulation?
| phantasmish wrote:
| Gaming OS? I guess if your gaming's heavy on online multiplayer
| games that insist on rootkits, and you're not willing to do
| that on a console instead (you can connect mice and keyboards
| to those now).
|
| 2025 is the year I finally removed Windows entirely from my
| life, thanks to SteamOS and Bazzite. It'd been solely for
| gaming for 25ish years, for me, having been (in various
| versions) my primary desktop OS for another sevenish years or
| so before that (3.1 was my first, and before that, MS-DOS) and
| now it's for... nothing. I truly have no use for it whatsoever.
| WD-42 wrote:
| Why you throwing shade at my two best friends, Linux and
| Proton, like that?
| UltraSane wrote:
| Every single developer at my company programs a C# app using
| Visual Studio on Windows.
| nighwatch wrote:
| Developing on Windows can be troublesome at times, but I still
| prefer how it feels to use. For development alone, macOS is
| probably the best choice since it provides a native Unix
| environment. I just happen to enjoy the Windows interface more,
| even if it means dealing with extra setup.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| > macOS is probably the best choice since it provides a
| native Unix environment
|
| And the first thing I do is install the gnu coreutils because
| it still ships really old BSD utils, and everything expects
| linux-isms now.
|
| In that regard, macOS is worse than Windows+WSL which at
| least is real Linux with a real package manager. macOS being
| better OOTB was true Pre-WSL/Windows 7 era where your choices
| were macOS for a UNIX with a really nice desktop environment
| and working sound, or taking a gamble with Linux on your
| hardware and praying everything worked. Windows was a non-
| starter for any development that wasn't win32, lest you were
| a masochist that wanted to deal with Cygwin and the like.
|
| I say this as someone still all-in on the "Apple Ecosystem"
| across all devices, Apple fans that are also developers all
| seem to be blind to the ways Apple has been slowly boiling
| the frog and making macOS hostile to developers in all other
| aspects of the OS outside of it having a unix terminal. Apple
| is outright hostile to developers at times.
| zadjii wrote:
| Notably this article was written based on Windows Terminal 1.18.
| That was before WT 1.22, which included this PR: [^1] which
| roughly doubled the terminal's throughput. That combined with a
| couple of other PRs in 1.22 made some scenarios up to _16x_
| faster[^2]
|
| [^1]: https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/pull/17510
|
| [^2]: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/windows-
| terminal-...
| zamadatix wrote:
| Thanks for the work on WT, it was really a massive step up I
| did not expect after all of these years.
| zadjii wrote:
| You're most welcome! Working on it to help serve the whole
| developer ecosystem has been the delight of my career :)
| bluedino wrote:
| Any similar benchmarks for MacOS?
|
| I daily drive a couple Macs and enjoy them but I can't help but
| notice they seem slower in the terminal than the alternatives.
| Can't get any kind of discussion on /r/mac as it's just 'Apple
| silicon is fast!'
| matternous wrote:
| This has been posted on HN a few times and seems to show that
| terminal.app is your best bet for most cases if you care about
| latency: https://danluu.com/term-latency/
| thewebguyd wrote:
| You can run the tests yourself, he describes them in the blog.
| Used the Is It Snappy! app to measure frames.
|
| I tried the throughput test myself just now between the native
| macOS terminal and ghostty.
|
| Ghostty: cat /tmp/lines.txt 0.00s user 0.02s system 36% cpu
| 0.069 total
|
| Native mac terminal: cat /tmp/lines.txt 0.00s user 0.02s system
| 18% cpu 0.115 total
|
| Seems much faster than any of the OP's windows terminals tested
| except for MinTTY.
|
| Likewise in one unscientific test with Is It Snappy, ghostty
| took 8 frames to render the output from pressing the key, but I
| didn't repeat multiple times.
|
| So, seems faster, but I know what you are talking about, I
| experience it too. Something about using the terminal on macOS
| _feels_ sluggish compared to alternatives. It 's especially
| noticeable for me over SSH
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(page generated 2025-11-11 23:00 UTC)