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Ghostty – Terminal Emulator

ghostty.org

141–150 of 372 posts

Re: Ghostty – Terminal Emulator

#142

I'm the original creator of Ghostty. It's been a few years now! I don't know why this is on the front page of HN again but let me give some meaningful updates across the board. First, libghostty is _way more exciting_ nowadays. It is already backing more than a dozen terminal projects that are free and commercial: https://github.com/Uzaaft/awesome-libghostty I think this is the real future of Ghostty and I've said th…

> front page

Nice! Looks like I should have rushed the interview. :D

Re: Ghostty – Terminal Emulator

#144

I'm the original creator of Ghostty. It's been a few years now! I don't know why this is on the front page of HN again but let me give some meaningful updates across the board. First, libghostty is _way more exciting_ nowadays. It is already backing more than a dozen terminal projects that are free and commercial: https://github.com/Uzaaft/awesome-libghostty I think this is the real future of Ghostty and I've said th…

Thanks for all the work you do! I had used terminal just a few dozen times before November — and now i am in terminal more than any app (even more than the web browser). It’s common for me to have 15-25 different terminal windows open for using Claude code. I shifted to Ghostty because I was looking for more features. Unfortunately, none of the features I wanted are available anywhere (though I’ve come to appreciate…

For 1, take a look at https://github.com/alex-903/zsh-mouse-and-flex-search. It runs as a zle-line-init hook, so it works in any terminal. A full terminal app implementation would be cleaner, however.

Re: Ghostty – Terminal Emulator

#146

I'm the original creator of Ghostty. It's been a few years now! I don't know why this is on the front page of HN again but let me give some meaningful updates across the board. First, libghostty is _way more exciting_ nowadays. It is already backing more than a dozen terminal projects that are free and commercial: https://github.com/Uzaaft/awesome-libghostty I think this is the real future of Ghostty and I've said th…

What's it been like managing a fairly large project with Zig? I know you've spoken highly of the language in the past, but recently it seems like Zig has been through some substantial changes that would be relevant to a terminal emulator. I'm curious how painful the churn has been for project maintainers.

Re: Ghostty – Terminal Emulator

#147
post #14

I like the look of this terminal, but it doesn't work correctly with SSH (top, ncdu for example) unless you hack the $TERM variable. It feels a bit vibecoded even though it isn't. To give a little productive criticism, one thing I really miss is when having tiled terminals, I want to be able to full screen one of them temporarily. Double click in iterm allows this, so does mod+f in i3wm. It really is the only thing s…

It sounds like you simply forgot to update your terminfo on your remote system. You must do this if your chosen terminal requires settings that are not compatible with "xterm-256color". Alacritty, kitty, and wezterm also require this, as they implement features that xterm doesn't (and most likely never will), if your terminfo DB is too old to already include them. Using Alacritty as an example, you'd take a file that…

If you have to configure the host to support the client rather than the client supporting unknown existing hosts, then what you have is a terminal, not a terminal emulator.

In 1970 all terminals were their own thing, tied to a single host somewhere in the same building by a dedicated serial cable. The terminal didn't move or connect to random other hosts, and the host had to be specially configured to work with any terminal connected to it.

Since then, a few terminal definitions have become standardized across all hosts for decades, and terminals are emulators that emulate one of those 40 year established standard definitions, because today terminals connect to countless unknown new random and varied hosts that the terminal user didn't install and configure before connecting, and may not even have the admin rights to do so after the fact either, and even if they do, it's wildly and inexcusably awful to require that.

It's entirely backwards for a terminal today to default to asserting it's own new $TERM, and to characterize the problems caused by this as "the user forgot to do this totally unreasonable thing" that no other terminal or terminal emulator has required for 40 years.

It's 100% a bug. The fact that it's intentional just means it's a design goal bug.

Re: Ghostty – Terminal Emulator

#148

Recently tried multiple terminals because I am gradually migrating off of Macs and I liked Ghostty but the lack of searching the scrollback has turned me away from it. Opening another editor to do the same I tried but didn't like. WezTerm has everything I need and is closest to iTerm2, minus being able to quit it and have it restore all windows and tabs on restart -- but oh well, it's not an important enough feature.…

You can search scroll back on Ghostty nightly. I switched straight from iTerm2 (after 20 years of iTerm), but _do_ remember the reason I rejected Kitty: it has a ton of Python in it, which is usually indicative of software which is going to be a pain in the ass.

Re: Ghostty – Terminal Emulator

#149
post #75

just installed ghostty, looks cool. but my honest question is how it is significantly better than iterm2 to justify such a switch? I am aware of the fact that it is faster, uses less memory, various configurations is more straight forward. but is that all? I have the feeling that I must be missing something big here.

I’ve been using iTerm2 for years. I’ve tried ghostty a few times and quickly went back to iterm each time for various reasons I can’t immediately recall. There is nothing I can think of lacking from iterm.

That said; if I was working more on Linux or Windows where iterm doesn’t exist it looks like ghostty would be a good option.

Re: Ghostty – Terminal Emulator

#150

I'm the original creator of Ghostty. It's been a few years now! I don't know why this is on the front page of HN again but let me give some meaningful updates across the board. First, libghostty is _way more exciting_ nowadays. It is already backing more than a dozen terminal projects that are free and commercial: https://github.com/Uzaaft/awesome-libghostty I think this is the real future of Ghostty and I've said th…

Hi,

Big fan. Can I get a ride on your jet?

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