urxvt. It's very fast. I do a non-scientific benchmark of 'time find ~'. After repeats I see: urxvt=3.86s, alacritty=4.25s, kitty=7.62s, xterm=14.04s. (That xterm time feels suspect, I remember it being faster)
Mostly it was an improvement over xterm. I setup runtime font size change, a perl script to open new terms in the same working directory, and scroll bar the way I like.
On my newer setup for wayland I settled on alacritty (kitty was a competitor, X terms were out because fractional scaling results in blurry fonts). Neither option has a scrollbar which sucks, but I was able to get similar feature parity to urxvt.
I'm surprised I had to scroll this far down for even the slightest mention of urxvt. It feels like it was the One True Terminal for minimal desktops at one point, yet it's taken a backseat in the terminal wars. I'm sure it's mostly due to its default configuration trying to emulate xterm, making it behave and feel ancient.
It's extremely efficient and surprisingly powerful with its perl scripting and plethora of extensions using it. I keep finding out about functionality I didn't know about, and much like vim, my usage of it has been evolving over the years. It really has no shortcomings to me, and I wish I could keep using it properly in Wayland. Everything else just feels either too tacky with its game-changing features or too minimal.
Mostly it was an improvement over xterm. I setup runtime font size change, a perl script to open new terms in the same working directory, and scroll bar the way I like.
On my newer setup for wayland I settled on alacritty (kitty was a competitor, X terms were out because fractional scaling results in blurry fonts). Neither option has a scrollbar which sucks, but I was able to get similar feature parity to urxvt.