KDE developer unveils Kwi, an experimental GPU-accelerated terminal
Kwi, built on Qt Quick and the Ghostty project's libghostty-vt library, has no tagged v0.1.0 release yet and is described as a proposal.
A KDE developer has announced Kwi, an experimental terminal emulator that renders on the GPU through Qt Quick, according to xda-developers.com. The project builds on libghostty-vt, a library from the Ghostty project.
Kwi's developer claims it renders 3-35x faster than Konsole, depending on the benchmark. The name is pronounced like "Kwee" and comes from the Korean word for ghost, "kwisin".
The project has no tagged v0.1.0 release yet. Its developer describes it as an experiment and a proposal rather than a finished product.
Kwi is not confined to its own application: other Qt Quick apps can import its module to embed the terminal in their own interfaces.
An ageing incumbent
Konsole, the terminal shipped with KDE, is almost 30 years old and renders via QWidget on the CPU, a different approach from Kwi's GPU path.
Quick answers
What is Kwi?
Kwi is an experimental KDE terminal emulator built on Qt Quick for GPU rendering and on libghostty-vt, a library from the Ghostty project.
Is Kwi available to download?
No tagged v0.1.0 release exists yet, and the developer describes the project as an experiment and a proposal.
How much faster is Kwi than Konsole?
The developer claims 3-35x faster rendering than Konsole, depending on the benchmark.