tmux
tmux is a terminal multiplexer that enables multiple terminals to be created, accessed, and controlled from a single screen. It allows sessions to be detached so they continue running in the background and later reattached exactly as left. tmux implements each window as a separate client process, supports ANSI/ISO color via VT220 (and later) control sequences, and is configurable through its example tmux.conf file and man page. Built atop minimal dependencies, libevent 2.x and ncurses, it requires only a C compiler, make, pkg-config, and a Yacc for building. tmux’s lightweight, single-screen architecture, extensive documentation, and cross-platform support make it a robust, standards-compliant solution for managing terminal workflows efficiently.
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GNOME Terminal
Terminal is a terminal emulator application for accessing a UNIX shell environment which can be used to run programs available on your system. Terminal supports escape sequences that control cursor position and colors. A terminal is a text input point in a computer that is also called the Command Line Interface (CLI). IBM 3270, VT100 and many others are hardware terminals that are no longer produced as physical devices. To emulate these terminals, there are terminal emulators. Any input entered in the Terminal to be executed is referred to as a command. You can run both command line and graphical user interface (GUI) programs from the terminal. If you have a program that ends abruptly without any warning or error, you may want to run it in Terminal. This will allow the program to output any error or debugging messages to the Terminal window. This information can be helpful when filing a bug report.
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WezTerm
WezTerm is a high-performance, cross-platform terminal emulator and multiplexer built in Rust that delivers GPU-accelerated rendering, including ligatures, color emoji, true color, dynamic color schemes, and hyperlinks, and modern windowing controls such as panes, tabs, and multiple windows on both local and remote hosts. Its single-process multiplexer provides scrollback, searchable history, mouse integration, Quick Select mode for rapid selection, Copy mode, shell integration, support for the iTerm image protocol, SSH connectivity, serial ports, Arduino devices, and workspace/session management via Lua-configurable scripts. Configuration is handled through a wezterm.lua file with hot-reload support, while a rich command-line interface (wezterm cli) lets you spawn programs, manipulate tabs and panes, and set domains. WezTerm adheres to ECMA-48 and xterm conventions for full ANSI/ISO compliance and offers native UI integration using platform-specific APIs.
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Ghostty
Ghostty is a fast, feature-rich, cross-platform terminal emulator that uses platform-native UI and GPU acceleration to deliver speed, features, and familiarity without compromise. Ghostty provides fully standards-compliant emulation, drawing on ECMA-48 and xterm conventions, to ensure compatibility with existing shells and software, while its multi-renderer architecture leverages OpenGL (with ligature support) to sustain smooth rendering up to 60 fps under heavy load and minimal I/O jitter via a dedicated I/O thread. It offers modern windowing capabilities such as multi-window, tabbing, and splits, and embraces native platform experiences through SwiftUI and GTK4, all built atop a shared core written in Zig (“libghostty”) that can be embedded via a C API. Users benefit from basic customizability (fonts, backgrounds, colors), an opt-in feature set for interactive CLI tools, and performance competitive with leading terminal emulators.
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