I'd kind of want a terminal that can be used for everything, including browsing, image display, playing videos and so forth. KDE konsole is good but I don't see any logical reason why I need to simulate 1980s terminals in 2025. Right now I use KDE konsole to either display something on the terminal or start some other program (such as gimp etc...) but I'd like the interface to actually be the terminal in itself, as-is.
Cool-retro-term: terminal emulator which mimics look and feel of CRTs
31–40 of 123 posts
Re: Cool-retro-term: terminal emulator which mimics look and feel of CRTs
#32Just like back in the day, this would cause me to tire so much faster than I normally do. These things are "cute", but for actually getting shit done, they are an annoyance. Does anyone use something like this for extended periods of time? The clarity of modern terminals is a godsend.
When the task is boring, making your terminal look cool helps.
Re: Cool-retro-term: terminal emulator which mimics look and feel of CRTs
#33Not quite this extreme, but I usually use the old Sun console font in my terminal windows, because I'm an old fart and it makes me happy. Someone at work just the other day looked at my screen and said, "What the heck is wrong with your terminal window???"
do you have a link to download it? or a package name?
It should get a modern version. IIRC, Luxi Mono was close.
Re: Cool-retro-term: terminal emulator which mimics look and feel of CRTs
#34Cool project, love the visuals. Wish it would merge as a plugin or something to a project like http://ghostty.org/ while I appreciate the visual fun, there are other pragmatic tools beyond visuals that are handy.
I think the best thing that could happen would be to be able to add shaders to windows in Wayland.
When MacOS 9 was a thing, I had an extension called “out of context menus” that added options such as “Gaussian blur” the the context menus so you could blur a window.
Re: Cool-retro-term: terminal emulator which mimics look and feel of CRTs
#35I contribute to this project (they use my 3278 font) but I think the best way to do this would be to have shaders available to compositor windows. This way, any terminal app (or video player) could tap into a library of CRT shaders.
The only thing missing would be frame-to-frame data availability to make persistence possible - Windows Terminal has shaders, but they can’t access the previous frame.
Re: Cool-retro-term: terminal emulator which mimics look and feel of CRTs
#36Not quite this extreme, but I usually use the old Sun console font in my terminal windows, because I'm an old fart and it makes me happy. Someone at work just the other day looked at my screen and said, "What the heck is wrong with your terminal window???"
do you have a link to download it? or a package name?
Re: Cool-retro-term: terminal emulator which mimics look and feel of CRTs
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
It can only apply shader(s) to the current frame I think. To produce the crt ghosting you'd probably need access to the previous frame (not an expert).
I've tried the shaders in the following repo with ghostty. They definitely work. I ended up keeping a cursor trail shader. https://github.com/0xhckr/ghostty-shaders
Yes, correct! If you check out https://ghostty.org/docs/config/reference, the iPreviousCursor is available, so it can be used against the iCurrentCursor to produce a fading effect. But I think the entire previous framebuffer isn't there (yet).
Re: Cool-retro-term: terminal emulator which mimics look and feel of CRTs
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
do you have a link to download it? or a package name?
https://github.com/NanoBillion/gallant
thanks. just found that too, linked from here: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/307356/what-is-the-...
Re: Cool-retro-term: terminal emulator which mimics look and feel of CRTs
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
do you have a link to download it? or a package name?
It should get a modern version. IIRC, Luxi Mono was close.
which is a historic X11 font:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxi_fonts
interesting
Re: Cool-retro-term: terminal emulator which mimics look and feel of CRTs
#40I used to daily drive this, most of the effects were minimized but I found that a little bit of white noise really helped make my terminal a lot easier on the eyes to read. I wonder if it is related to how some people find that film grain has a pleasing effect. For those looking at the screenshots note that the terminal is incredibly customizable, you don't have to have all the effects dialed up to 11! Sadly bit rot…
I have ghostty set up with this “starfield” shader: https://github.com/0xhckr/ghostty-shaders/blob/main/starfiel...
I also have it set up to do adaptive theme, so in light mode the galaxy is mostly just a little noise on the black text but in dark mode it’s like I’m piloting a space ship. Highly recommend.
I also documented a few other shaders on my blog here: https://catskull.net/fun-with-ghostty-shaders.html
Edit: I use the "starfield" shader, not the "galaxy" shader. Doh!