KDE developer Eike Hein announced a new terminal emulator called Kwi, built as a modern alternative to Konsole. Kwi uses Ghostty's libghostty-vt library plus mature KDE Frameworks, and supports GPU acceleration via OpenGL or Vulkan through the Qt Scene Graph. It claims 3x to 35x faster overall performance than Konsole, citing 870 fps in the DOOM-fire-zig benchmark versus 23 fps for Konsole. Kwi is experimental with no v0.1.0 tag yet, has only seen limited testing by a small circle, and is not proposed as a Konsole replacement.
Questions this post answers
What is the new KDE terminal emulator called Kwi and how does it compare to Konsole in performance?
Kwi is an experimental KDE terminal emulator announced by KDE developer Eike Hein, built using Ghostty's libghostty-vt library and KDE Frameworks, with GPU acceleration via OpenGL or Vulkan through the Qt Scene Graph. It claims 3x to 35x faster overall performance than Konsole depending on the benchmark, including 870 fps versus Konsole's 23 fps in the DOOM-fire-zig test. It has no v0.1.0 release yet and is not proposed as a Konsole replacement. Developers evaluating Linux desktop terminal options can track Kwi's progress against Konsole on daily.dev.
Does Kwi use Ghostty's code internally?
Yes, Kwi employs Ghostty's libghostty-vt library alongside mature KDE Frameworks components for its implementation, combining it with GPU-accelerated rendering through the Qt Scene Graph using OpenGL or Vulkan. Anyone comparing terminal emulator internals can follow how Kwi combines Ghostty and KDE tech on daily.dev.