Ghostty: A ready-to-use, cross-platform terminal emulator
As is well known, every corner (scope or category) of the Linuxverse is usually filled with enough or There are many software tools that do the same thing, and they usually vary a little or a lot, in terms of their characteristics and functions, or objectives and scope. And a good example of this statement is, without a doubt, the category of Terminals. Where, in addition to the well-known ones, which come by default and are packed with functions within the most well-known Desktop Environments (GNOME, Plasma, XFCE, LXDE, LXQT, Mate, Cinnamon) there are others such as: acritty, Black box, Ptyxis, Terminalapp, Wave y Warp, among many others. However, today we will address a fairly recent one called «Ghostty».
Highlighting from the start that, unlike many others that do not come integrated in any DE/WM, Ghostty comes ready to run out of the box, despite not bringing a visual settings option (preferences) and offering a completely empty, but simple and highly configurable configuration file. Which is due to its fzero-configuration philosophy, meaning it is designed to work out of the box with no extra configuration required for most users. So, if you are passionate about Linux or macOS Terminals, we invite you to continue reading this post about this interesting and innovative Terminal.
But, before starting this present publication on said free, open and cross-platform terminal called «Ghostty», we recommend you explore the previous related post with the AI-assisted Terminal called Warp, by the time you finish reading this:
Warp is a cross-platform terminal emulator with AI and collaboration tools that, although it is proprietary software, includes telemetry enabled by default and requires a subscription, promises privacy features, and offers amazing features and functions not found in many others. In addition, it supports three shell environments: Bash, ZSh and Fish.
Ghostty: A ready-to-use, cross-platform terminal emulator
What is Ghostty?
According to Official website of said software tool, Ghostty It is briefly described as follows:
Ghostty is a fast, feature-rich, cross-platform terminal emulator that uses a platform-native user interface and GPU acceleration.
However, within its official documentation we are told more broadly as follows:
Ghostty is a terminal emulator that stands out for being fast, feature-rich, and native. While there are many excellent terminal emulators available, they all force you to choose between speed, features, or native UI. Ghostty offers all three.
In addition, in his GitHub repository, its developer states the following:
For rendering, Ghostty offers a multi-renderer architecture using OpenGL on Linux and Metal on macOS. As far as I know, we are the only terminal emulator other than iTerm that uses Metal directly. And we are the only terminal emulator that has a Metal renderer that supports ligatures (iTerm uses a CPU renderer if ligatures are enabled). As a result, Ghostty can maintain around 60fps under heavy load and much more in general, although the terminal generally renders much lower due to small screen changes.
How to install and configure/customize on Ubuntu/Debian and derived Distros?
For Distros like Ubuntu/Debian or other derivatives based on both, its installation is simple, fast and easy. And for this, you only need Download the installer corresponding to your current version for Ubuntu/Debian in .deb format. Then, run it and install it in the usual and preferred way for each one. And once installed we just have to run it and start using it. While, to configure it, we just have to follow the steps in their official documentation or lean on the web configuration tool call «Ghostty Config». As you can see in the following screenshots:
Ptyxis is a terminal emulator that was previously known as GNOME Prompt, and focuses on performance and features that work well with the VTE library. Among other things, when a privileged command is used, the top bar turns red, something we also see in mobile distributions like Phosh. It also offers themes that can be chosen from the settings.
Summary
In summary, «Ghostty» is a new and innovative Terminal for Linux and macOS which is just beginning its long and rocky path in the Linuxverse. And all this, with an interesting Zero Configuration philosophy, despite offering high customization capabilities via text file. Personally, I am sure that with the support of many, this project will be very successful in the long term, especially if it ever integrates some AI capabilities, either via plugins or natively. And in case you are already using this Terminal, we invite you to tell us about your experience with it, to learn more about its pros and cons, for the knowledge and usefulness of the entire Linuxverse Community that reads us.
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