
A quick guide on how to compile the new terminal Ghostty in Void Linux

A home for discussion of terminal emulators for all platforms.
RULES:
Compiling Ghostty terminal in Void Linux
A quick guide on how to compile the new terminal Ghostty in Void Linux
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/27741183
From tmux to kitty ~ terminal workflows
cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/18481126
I've recently stopped using tmux in favour of relying fully kitty's built-in windows and tabs, and I'm a fan.
The real killer app for me was the "pass_keys" plugin that allows you to navigate vim and kitty splits all with the same keys. I think there are plugins that allow you to do the same between vim<>tmux<>kitty as well, so it's not like you would need to drop tmux to take advantage of it.
Anyway, so that's been a big shift in my daily workflow. I've been using tmux for well over a decade, and GNU screen before that (I was never able to train myself away from the
C-a
prefix.The one thing I miss a lot is being able to quickly detach and re-attach to existing sessions. Especially when doing some work over an ssh connection. But then I can always just shove the terminal into scratch space, or another i3 workspace.
This isn't me
Kitty v0.39.0
kitty is a feature-rich, cross-platform, fast, GPU based terminal. To update kitty, follow the instructions. Recent major new features: Multiple sized text [0.40]: kitty is the first major terminal...
Kitty v0.39.0 was released with 12 changes not including any major new feature on 2025/01/16
Alacritty Version 0.15.0
Added Config option window.level = "AlwaysOnTop" to force Alacritty to always be the toplevel window Escape sequence to move cursor forward tabs ( CSI Ps I ) Pass activation token in alacritty msg...
We have 3 new additions, 3 changes and 9 changes included in version v0.15.0 released on 2025/01/14
Get border around Ghostty in i3wm
On current main (4cf6202) window border is not removed with window-decoration=false but it is removed with gtk-titlebar=false. I've bisected the behavior change to 2d7baaa (i.e. #1950). As document...
I found the following Ghostty config can be used to get i3wm border around Ghostty (using i3wm with XFCE)
undefined
window-decoration = true gtk-titlebar = false gtk-adwaita = false
Related: With the release of 1.0.1 of Ghostty, there is an issue with border around Ghostty on Linux
foot v1.20.0 released
### Added * Unicode data files updated to Unicode 16. Foot uses these to determine which VS-15 and VS-16 sequences are valid, and which are not. * Box drawing characters U+1CD00...U+1CDE5 (the _"octants"_ from the _"Symbols for Legacy Computing Supplement"_ codepoint range, added in Unicode 1...
Version 1.20.0 of Foot terminal is released with 3 additions, 4 changes and 2 fixes.
Ghostty 1.0.1 released
First patch version is released without changelog (I couldn't find).
There are 227 commits in 78 changed files since first major version released on 26th Dec, 2024.
Ghostty 1.0 is out.
If you told me two years ago that I would be releasing a terminal emulator, I wouldn't have believed you. I've always been a fan of the terminal, my entire career was built around shipping terminal-first software. But they're a solved problem, right? That's what I thought.
I started the project in 2022 merely as a way to play with Zig, do some graphics programming, and deepen my understanding of terminals. I never intended to release it. I didn't think there was innovation to be had. I thought I would learn a lot over a few months and move on.
But as I worked on it, I looked at other terminals differently. I saw tradeoffs that I didn't like. I saw features that I wanted. I saw performance that I could improve. I saw stagnation. There are many fantastic terminals out there and you should use them if they work for you. But I wanted something different and thought maybe others did too.
And so Ghostty was born. It's not perfect, it's not done, it's not for ever
kitty v0.38.0 released
with 13 changes (nothing major) kitty v0.38.0 was released on 2024-12-15.
Rio v0.2.0 released
Note: The migration from 0.1.x to v0.2.x changed considerably the renderer source code, although it was tested for a while it's entirely possible that introduced bugs (hopefully not!). Performance ...
Rio terminal emulator released on 13th November, 2024 with various improvements and changes. See the release page for details changes.
and why Ghostty matters
So even though I was a bit confused by why Ghostty needs to exist at first, I'm now completely sold. And to be completely honest, you should be too.
read details in the post.
p.s. I am not the author.
Kitty v0.37.0 released
kitty is a feature-rich, cross-platform, fast, GPU based terminal. To update kitty, follow the instructions. Recent major new features: Multiple sized text [0.40]: kitty is the first major terminal...
released on 2024-10-30 with 7 changes/fixes listed. The major change is "the cursor tails"
Show an animated trail when the text cursor makes large jumps making it easy to follow cursor movements. Inspired by the similar feature in neovide, but works with terminal multiplexers and kitty windows as well. See the pull request for a demonstration video. This feature is optional and must be turned on by the
cursor_trail
option in kitty.conf.
A couple terminal utils
I don't know if anyone could use these, but I thought I'd share two commands I use sometimes while trying out different terminals. In my .bash_aliases
file I have:
undefined
alias whatterm="ps -o 'cmd=' -p $(ps -o 'ppid=' -p $$)"
example:
undefined
$ whatterm alacritty
and I have the following script saved in my local bin directory as testterm
. I don't know how great of a test it is, but it shows the capabilities of different terminals and I like the pretty colors.
undefined
#!/bin/sh echo "# 24-bit (true-color)" # based on: https://gist.github.com/XVilka/8346728 term_cols="$(tput cols || echo 80)" cols=$(echo "2^((l($term_cols)/l(2))-1)" | bc -l 2> /dev/null) rows=$(( cols / 2 )) awk -v cols="$cols" -v rows="$rows" 'BEGIN{ s=" "; m=cols+rows; for (row = 0; row<rows; row++) { for (col = 0; col<cols; col++) { i = row+col; r = 255-(i*255/m); g = (i*510/m); b = (i*255/m);
foot terminal version 1.19.0 released
### Added * `resize-keep-grid` option, controlling whether the window is resized (and the grid reflowed) or not when e.g. zooming in/out ([#1807][1807]). * `strikeout-thickness` option. * Implemented the new `xdg-toplevel-icon-v1` protocol. * Implemented `CSI 21 t`: report window title. * ...
5 fixes, 5 changes and 5 new additions
Alacritty Version 0.14.0 released
Packaging Minimum Rust version has been bumped to 1.74.0 Added Support relative path imports from config files alacritty migrate support for TOML configuration changes Headless mode using alacri...
17 fixes, 7 changes and 3 additions.
Ghostty to get public release in December
After nearly two years of development and private beta testing1, I’m excited to share that Ghostty 1.0 will be publicly released in December 2024 as an open-source project under the MIT license.
In this blog post, I want to restate the broader goals of the Ghostty project and outline the specific goals for the 1.0 release. I have ambitious plans for Ghostty, but I also want to set clear expectations for what to expect on day one versus what will come in the future.
In short, Ghostty 1.0 aims to be the best drop-in replacement for your current terminal emulator on macOS and Linux. Ghostty will be fast, feature-rich, and have a platform-native GUI while being the most standards-compliant terminal emulator available.
rxvt-unicode: fork of the well known terminal emulator rxvt
Its main features (many of them unique) over rxvt are: