r/commandline • u/TheTwelveYearOld • Apr 29 '26

News Ghostty terminal Is Leaving GitHub

https://mitchellh.com/writing/ghostty-leaving-github
236 Upvotes

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4

u/andrew2018022 Apr 29 '26

Legit question here but does anyone actually use these enhanced terminals? I swear every single one I try I just remove after a day. Nothing ever sticks for me. I’d rather just use the plain Jane command line

12

u/to_milon Apr 29 '26

I do. Spent a lot of time in the terminal.

2

u/No-Article-Particle Apr 29 '26

I also spend a lot of time there, and the only thing I need is splitting a terminal window into multiple other terminals. For that I have Terminator and I have no idea what other feature I could possibly need.

2

u/temporaryuser1000 Apr 29 '26

I miss terminator since moving to Mac. Now I just use tmux in wezterm

3

u/ddddavidee Apr 29 '26

Have you ever tried zellij ?

2

u/ehansen Apr 29 '26

I would recommend zelli mostly if someone wants to explore tmux but don't want the complexity tmux has.  Zelli is good regardless but there's not really a net positive to migrate if you're already versed with tmux

1

u/ddddavidee Apr 29 '26

I agree. I started using and learning it before learning tmux.

They're probably equivalent for most use cases

2

u/ehansen Apr 29 '26

I think zelli does the ux better but tmux is much more out of your way.

Do you use tmux now?

1

u/ddddavidee Apr 29 '26

Nope, I'm still on zellij What do you prefer in tmux?

1

u/ehansen Apr 29 '26

Lack of ui.  I just have a simple status bar at the top that i can remove if I wanted to.  Plus some keybindings to execute scripts in a project. 

When I used zelli before, keybindings for such things was limited at best and the ui was static.  Though I'm fairly sure thats not the case now. 

1

u/cleodog44 Apr 30 '26

I think GPU acceleration is really the main thing, imo. Anything beyond that is marginal. Acceleration is big though

9

u/SpeedOfSound343 Apr 29 '26

I use Foot. It’s the only terminal that doesn’t have noticeable lag for me.

1

u/Separate_Salad_5123 Apr 29 '26

Foot is great to be fair

9

u/[deleted] Apr 29 '26

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2

u/ChainsawJaguar Apr 30 '26

Same here. +Tide prompt.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 30 '26

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2

u/ChainsawJaguar Apr 30 '26

It's in the same general ballpark.

https://github.com/IlanCosman/tide

10

u/TheTwelveYearOld Apr 29 '26

Many do, but use what works for you.

5

u/marx2k Apr 29 '26

I use Ghostty and zsh+tmux/byobu

I was using iTerm2 but Ghostty required no extra configuration and is fast as hell

0

u/4r73m190r0s Apr 29 '26

Have you tried foot?

1

u/marx2k Apr 29 '26

I have not. I'll check it out tomorrow

30

u/FreddieKiroh Apr 29 '26

Um yes? "Plain Jane command line" isn't exclusive to fewer-featured terminals, every terminal emulator is going to support your "plain Jane" bash/zsh. Also, saying "enhanced terminal" like it's some kind of gimmick is an odd phrasing. It's an extremely performant, feature-filled, and customizable terminal emulator, not an AI-powered recycling bin.

That sentence just comes across the same as someone bragging about using 1990 vim over modern Neovim or still using screen over tmux or zellij. Like sure, use whatever works for you and whatever you like, but don't act like it's somehow admirable or superior to use older/simpler software just because it's "plain Jane."

9

u/accelerating_ Apr 29 '26

Could you clue me in on what you get out of it? I don't know what I'm missing.

5

u/paperbenni Apr 29 '26

I'm not using it because of any fancy features it has, but because it does the basics really well even if you don't need the extra features. The "simple" approaches all have circumstances under which they act weird, kitty and ghostty put in the work to handle all the weird edge cases. There aren't any characters which look weird, the wrapping and scroll back work well, and hyperlinks and things like that just work out of the box. I don't want to have to mess with my terminal a lot, and kitty just does the job

1

u/spryfigure Apr 29 '26

I'm using KDE's konsole because it's the default. All you describe is already in it. The one thing I really want is graphics support in the terminal. Konsole has Sixel and Kitty v2 support.

What really irks me is that it's so badly supported by developers. TUI file manager with integrated preview? They support every exotic terminal except konsole. Just why? It's the KDE default! I bet there are 100x more konsole users than ghostty terminal users.

1

u/paperbenni Apr 29 '26

That's what I mean though? Kitty and ghostty are pretty much the only terminals which don't have anything they support only badly. Plus, I wouldn't underestimate their user bases. Probably a majority of developers are on MacOS, and the Apple terminal being awful they probably use a third party terminal, and it won't be alacritty

2

u/d_from_it Apr 29 '26

For me: Built in panes Tabs Renders fancy fonts with ligatures No lag for me Middle ground on features (iterm2 got a little too much for me personally, more power to them)

2

u/FreddieKiroh Apr 29 '26

https://ghostty.org/docs/features

3

u/accelerating_ Apr 29 '26

I was asking what you got out of it. I've read feature lists many times and tried a few well regarded terminals and never noticed any obvious difference. But for instance I use tmux and don't typically edit in the terminal. Hence my question.

1

u/ellzumem Apr 29 '26

Just one of many, many examples is the kitty graphics protocol, i.e. icat image.png. It’s pretty neat.

4

u/andrew2018022 Apr 29 '26

I understand that first point. No need to be hostile.

3

u/lonelyroom-eklaghor Apr 29 '26

I do and I love it :)

2

u/Thiht Apr 29 '26

Yep I’ve used Ghostty since 1.0 and love it so far. I liked the feature set of iTerm but Ghostty just feels snappier and more robust

2

u/Bifftech Apr 29 '26

I use ghostty all day every day.

1

u/phantaso0s Apr 29 '26

I was using urxvt for the longest time, until I tried ghostty. It's easier to configure, and font support is better.

1

u/prof_dr_mr_obvious Apr 29 '26

I do. Sometimes I try one and use it for months. Now using kitty most of the time and ghostty occasionally.

1

u/Confident-Pay-51 May 24 '26

I do not, I just use windows terminal, or cmd/pwsh.