Show HN: Boo – Screen-style terminal multiplexer built on libghostty
1–10 of 31 posts
Re: Show HN: Boo – Screen-style terminal multiplexer built on libghostty
#2You've obviously written this because screen wasn't doing the right thing, but your readme only explains that it's a "young project, not a drop-in GNU screen replacement". What are its advantages over screen or tmux?
Re: Show HN: Boo – Screen-style terminal multiplexer built on libghostty
#3You've obviously written this because screen wasn't doing the right thing, but your readme only explains that it's a "young project, not a drop-in GNU screen replacement". What are its advantages over screen or tmux?
Fair. Adding a section for this now.
screen actually works the same way architecturally: it parses all output through its own built-in terminal emulator and redraws from that state on reattach. But that emulator is decades old and lags far behind what modern programs emit. Whatever it doesn't understand gets dropped or mangled on redraw. boo swaps that layer for libghostty-vt, Ghostty's VT core, so the saved state matches what your terminal would actually display, and terminal queries get answered while detached so TUIs don't hang unattended.
tmux is great, it was just never the model I wanted. I really liked screen's simplicity, sessions and a prefix key and nothing else to learn, and boo keeps exactly that.
Re: Show HN: Boo – Screen-style terminal multiplexer built on libghostty
#4this looks nice! i've been using herdr the last couple of weeks as a terminal multiplexer for agents, which works amazingly well.
Re: Show HN: Boo – Screen-style terminal multiplexer built on libghostty
#5You've obviously written this because screen wasn't doing the right thing, but your readme only explains that it's a "young project, not a drop-in GNU screen replacement". What are its advantages over screen or tmux?
Fair. Adding a section for this now. screen actually works the same way architecturally: it parses all output through its own built-in terminal emulator and redraws from that state on reattach. But that emulator is decades old and lags far behind what modern programs emit. Whatever it doesn't understand gets dropped or mangled on redraw. boo swaps that layer for libghostty-vt, Ghostty's VT core, so the saved state ma…
can you share more on the tmux model vs boo?
Re: Show HN: Boo – Screen-style terminal multiplexer built on libghostty
#6Installed using the curl-to-bash on Sequoia and I’m getting “error: ReadOnlyFileSystem” on ‘boo new’. Can’t see any open issues on gh and nothing in the readme.
Definitely interested in something like this - love ghostty and I’ve been finding Zellij a bit crashy recently (plus I don’t really need tabs).
Re: Show HN: Boo – Screen-style terminal multiplexer built on libghostty
#7Installed using the curl-to-bash on Sequoia and I’m getting “error: ReadOnlyFileSystem” on ‘boo new’. Can’t see any open issues on gh and nothing in the readme. Definitely interested in something like this - love ghostty and I’ve been finding Zellij a bit crashy recently (plus I don’t really need tabs).
I'll take a look at this now. Thanks for reporting!
Re: Show HN: Boo – Screen-style terminal multiplexer built on libghostty
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fair. Adding a section for this now. screen actually works the same way architecturally: it parses all output through its own built-in terminal emulator and redraws from that state on reattach. But that emulator is decades old and lags far behind what modern programs emit. Whatever it doesn't understand gets dropped or mangled on redraw. boo swaps that layer for libghostty-vt, Ghostty's VT core, so the saved state ma…
can you share more on the tmux model vs boo?
I want boo to be a screen replacement, not a tmux replacement. tmux gives you a whole workspace: layout, scrollback, copy mode, a status bar. screen's appeal was that it did almost none of that: sessions, a prefix key, done. boo keeps that model and swaps the emulation for libghostty so reattach actually redraws correctly.
They also compose: a boo session is just a PTY running a program, so you can run tmux inside one if you want.
Re: Show HN: Boo – Screen-style terminal multiplexer built on libghostty
#9Installed using the curl-to-bash on Sequoia and I’m getting “error: ReadOnlyFileSystem” on ‘boo new’. Can’t see any open issues on gh and nothing in the readme. Definitely interested in something like this - love ghostty and I’ve been finding Zellij a bit crashy recently (plus I don’t really need tabs).
I'll take a look at this now. Thanks for reporting!
Just published v0.5.13 which should fix this! It seems to be a path issue. Now boo falls back to tmpdir for storing sockets.
Re: Show HN: Boo – Screen-style terminal multiplexer built on libghostty
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fair. Adding a section for this now. screen actually works the same way architecturally: it parses all output through its own built-in terminal emulator and redraws from that state on reattach. But that emulator is decades old and lags far behind what modern programs emit. Whatever it doesn't understand gets dropped or mangled on redraw. boo swaps that layer for libghostty-vt, Ghostty's VT core, so the saved state ma…
can you share more on the tmux model vs boo?
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