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KDE is building a brand-new GPU-accelerated Linux terminal emulator from scratch called Kwi (pronounced "kwee"). Built on Ghostty’s blazing-fast libghostty-vt core and wrapped in a native KDE Plasma 6 Kirigami and Qt Quick interface, Kwi delivers 3x to 35x faster rendering than Konsole—hitting 870 FPS vs Konsole’s 23 FPS in the Doom Fire terminal benchmark.
In this hands-on first look, we test KDE’s experimental Kwi terminal on Wayland, explore why KDE needed a fresh architecture after 29 years of Konsole, and break down its biggest features and current dealbreakers—including live cross-window tab dragging, zero-config GUI settings, Kitty inline graphics, Wayland fractional scaling, systemd Flatpak isolation, and why you should keep Konsole installed alongside it for now.
Install Kwi Nightly via Flatpak
1. Add Flathub (required for the KDE Platform 6.11 runtime):
flatpak remote-add –user –if-not-exists flathub https://dl.flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo
2. Add the KDE Kwi Nightly repository and install Kwi:
flatpak remote-add –user –if-not-exists kwi-nightly https://cdn.kde.org/flatpak/kwi-nightly/kwi-nightly.flatpakrepo
flatpak install –user kwi-nightly org.kde.kwi
3. Launch Kwi (or open it from the KDE Plasma Application Launcher):
flatpak run org.kde.kwi
Update Kwi to the latest nightly build anytime:
flatpak update
Tip for Zsh and Fish users: The nightly Flatpak defaults to Bash. To use Fish or Zsh, open the top-right menu in Kwi, go to Configure Kwi, select Presets, and set your shell executable path.
Key Highlights of KDE Kwi
– Powered by Ghostty’s headless libghostty-vt 1.0 terminal engine and KDE KPty
– Native KDE Plasma 6 UI built with Qt Quick Scene Graph and Kirigami (OpenGL and Vulkan)
– Graphical configuration menu for fonts, cursor style, Plasma background blur, and presets (no Lua or TOML config files needed)
– Unified QML module and drop-in KPart plugin for Dolphin, Kate, and Yakuake
– Live cross-window tab drag-and-drop, mouse-wheel tab switching, and flicker-free search
– Crisp Wayland fractional scaling, Nerd Font and Powerline glyphs, ligatures, Kitty image/animation protocols, and full screen-reader accessibility
– Container-ready Flatpak design with direct D-Bus host shell spawning and per-tab systemd OOM isolation for the upcoming KDE Linux OS
Official Links and Resources
– Kwi Source Code (KDE Invent): https://invent.kde.org/utilities/kwi
– Kwi GitHub Mirror: https://github.com/KDE/kwi
– Eike Hein’s Announcement ("Introducing Kwi"): https://blogs.kde.org/2026/11/01/introducing-kwi/
– Development Update ("This Week in Kwi: Liftoff"): https://blogs.kde.org/2026/11/06/this-week-in-kwi-2026-w45/
– Libghostty 1.0 Architecture: https://mitchellh.com/writing/libghostty-1-0
Timestamps:
00:00 Intro: Meet Kwi (Not Kiwi!)
01:14 First Look at Kwi & 870 FPS GPU Speed
03:39 Ghostty Core (libghostty-vt) & Native KDE Stack
05:23 Live Tab Dragging & Visual Polish
07:25 What Kwi Is Missing & Replacing Linux’s Kernel TTY
08:56 Flatpak Tech & How to Try Kwi Tonight
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