foot, Alacritty, Ghostty, kitty
Each terminal runs while true; do ls -la /usr/lib; done in a tiled window of Omarchy's session and
scrolls as fast as it can for 12 seconds, on every machine of the lab, under Hypoland and
under stock Hyprland 0.57.1. Every cell is Hypoland / Hyprland: green where Hypoland is at least 5% better,
red where it is at least 5% worse; a dash where the terminal does not run.
| Terminal | Version | How it draws |
|---|---|---|
| foot | 1.28.0 | On the CPU, into shared memory (wl_shm): the compositor makes the texture, by zero copy where it can. |
| Alacritty | 0.17.0 | OpenGL ES 2 / OpenGL 3.3, GPU buffers (dmabuf); runs on the X200 too. |
| Ghostty | 1.4.0 | A GTK 4 window drawn by Ghostty's own OpenGL 3.3 renderer, GPU buffers. |
| kitty | 0.50.0 | OpenGL 3.3, GPU buffers. |
Medians of 8 to 10 fresh sessions of each compositor per machine, alternating from 2026-11-10 23:09 to 11-11 07:30, Hypoland master r957 (after 0.3.0) against Hyprland 0.57.1-2. The Mac mini 2014 had no monitor that night and is left out; the Mac mini M1's display driver reports no page flips, so it has no frames on the screen. Ghostty and kitty need OpenGL 3.3: not on the X200, and Ghostty does not start on the Chromebook and the Samsung (Bay Trail and Ivy Bridge). On the X200 Hyprland runs with Omarchy's GLES 3 override (omarchy#14764), which the terminals get too. Raw data, every session's values and the scripts.
The compositor's CPU
| Hypoland / Hyprland 0.57.1 | foot | Alacritty | Ghostty | kitty |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lenovo ThinkPad X200 | 9.0% / 14.1% | 4.6% / 4.6% | – | – |
| Desktop, AMD A8-6600K APU | 2.6% / 14.4% | 4.5% / 5.6% | 4.6% / 5.8% | 4.3% / 4.8% |
| Samsung Series 7 Ultra (NP730U3E) | 4.3% / 15.9% | 5.4% / 3.8% | – | 4.4% / 4.0% |
| Dell Chromebook 11 3120 | 5.2% / 15.1% | 4.8% / 6.5% | – | 3.4% / 4.7% |
| Lenovo ThinkPad T550 | 3.7% / 13.4% | 5.3% / 6.5% | 6.0% / 7.4% | 4.7% / 6.5% |
| Dell XPS 13 9343 | 3.9% / 22.8% | 5.2% / 7.1% | 6.1% / 5.5% | 5.5% / 6.2% |
| Lenovo ThinkPad T460s | 3.2% / 9.2% | 4.5% / 5.9% | 5.0% / 6.3% | 4.4% / 5.5% |
| Lenovo ThinkPad T490 | 4.2% / 15.1% | 4.0% / 4.7% | 6.0% / 7.3% | 4.0% / 4.9% |
| Apple Mac mini M1 | 4.5% / 5.5% | 2.9% / 3.7% | 1.9% / 2.8% | 2.5% / 3.4% |
| Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge 14" | 6.6% / 7.3% | 3.5% / 4.4% | 2.9% / 3.3% | 3.1% / 3.9% |
Percent of one core over the 12 s of scrolling: the compositor alone, all its threads.
The compositor's CPU per frame on the screen
| Hypoland / Hyprland 0.57.1 | foot | Alacritty | Ghostty | kitty |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lenovo ThinkPad X200 | 2.98 ms / 5.21 ms | 1.00 ms / 1.35 ms | – | – |
| Desktop, AMD A8-6600K APU | 0.78 ms / 4.41 ms | 0.76 ms / 0.97 ms | 0.78 ms / 0.99 ms | 0.80 ms / 0.97 ms |
| Samsung Series 7 Ultra (NP730U3E) | 0.98 ms / 5.29 ms | 1.02 ms / 1.26 ms | – | 0.91 ms / 1.28 ms |
| Dell Chromebook 11 3120 | 1.80 ms / 6.89 ms | 1.32 ms / 1.87 ms | – | 1.36 ms / 1.87 ms |
| Lenovo ThinkPad T550 | 0.77 ms / 2.66 ms | 0.88 ms / 1.09 ms | 1.03 ms / 1.37 ms | 0.79 ms / 1.08 ms |
| Dell XPS 13 9343 | 0.83 ms / 6.16 ms | 0.88 ms / 1.43 ms | 1.36 ms / 1.73 ms | 0.99 ms / 1.41 ms |
| Lenovo ThinkPad T460s | 0.70 ms / 2.14 ms | 0.76 ms / 1.00 ms | 0.86 ms / 1.07 ms | 0.73 ms / 0.92 ms |
| Lenovo ThinkPad T490 | 0.79 ms / 3.17 ms | 0.67 ms / 0.77 ms | 1.00 ms / 1.22 ms | 0.67 ms / 0.82 ms |
| Apple Mac mini M1 | – | – | – | – |
| Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge 14" | 1.00 ms / 1.19 ms | 0.31 ms / 0.43 ms | 0.25 ms / 0.28 ms | 0.36 ms / 0.40 ms |
The same per frame the compositor put on the screen, so a compositor that shows more frames is not read as one that costs more.
Frames on the screen
| Hypoland / Hyprland 0.57.1 | foot | Alacritty | Ghostty | kitty |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lenovo ThinkPad X200 | 30 fps / 27 fps | 46 fps / 34 fps | – | – |
| Desktop, AMD A8-6600K APU | 33 fps / 33 fps | 60 fps / 58 fps | 59 fps / 58 fps | 54 fps / 49 fps |
| Samsung Series 7 Ultra (NP730U3E) | 44 fps / 30 fps | 53 fps / 30 fps | – | 48 fps / 31 fps |
| Dell Chromebook 11 3120 | 29 fps / 22 fps | 36 fps / 35 fps | – | 25 fps / 25 fps |
| Lenovo ThinkPad T550 | 48 fps / 51 fps | 60 fps / 60 fps | 59 fps / 55 fps | 60 fps / 60 fps |
| Dell XPS 13 9343 | 46 fps / 37 fps | 60 fps / 50 fps | 45 fps / 32 fps | 55 fps / 44 fps |
| Lenovo ThinkPad T460s | 45 fps / 43 fps | 60 fps / 59 fps | 58 fps / 58 fps | 60 fps / 59 fps |
| Lenovo ThinkPad T490 | 53 fps / 47 fps | 60 fps / 60 fps | 60 fps / 60 fps | 60 fps / 60 fps |
| Apple Mac mini M1 | – | – | – | – |
| Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge 14" | 63 fps / 62 fps | 112 fps / 103 fps | 117 fps / 118 fps | 85 fps / 89 fps |
The compositor's page flips a second. The terminals print as fast as they can, so this is how many of their frames reach the screen; the Galaxy Book's screen runs at 120 Hz.