Cool Retro Term vs Ptyxis
Cool Retro Term
github.com
Ptyxis
devsuite.appSide by side
| Figure | Cool Retro Term | Ptyxis |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Terminal Emulators | 8.8 (#2) | 7.8 (#26) |
| Spec score · Terminal apps | 8.0 (#24) | 7.7 (#32) |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Headquarters | Albuzzano, Italy | Portland, Oregon |
| Maker | The GitHub account identifies Swordfish90 as Filippo Scognamiglio and lists Pavia, Italy. | The maker is Christian Hergert; the site says it is grown in Portland, Oregon. |
| Purpose | Cool Retro Term is a terminal emulator designed to mimic the look and feel of old cathode tube screens. | Ptyxis is a container-oriented terminal for GNOME. |
| Rendering | The 1.2.0 release added sub-pixel rasterization and a blinking cursor. | It uses GPU rendering through Vulkan or OpenGL, built on VTE. |
| Support | The project wiki provides installation and Linux/macOS build instructions, theme guidance, and information about the terminal widget. | The maker's page directs users to file an issue if they encounter a problem. |
| Supported platforms | linux,macos | Linux |
| Tabs | The 2.0.0-beta2 release added tab-management shortcuts. | Ptyxis has searchable tab overviews to help users find a terminal tab. |
Plans
In their own words
Cool Retro Term
Cool Retro Term is a free, open-source terminal emulator for Linux and macOS that imitates the appearance of cathode-ray tube screens. The project describes it as customizable and reasonably lightweight. A context menu exposes color, font, and visual-effect settings. Community profiles can add flicker, scanline rasterization, screen curvature, static noise, and burn-in effects, while the wiki invites users to share themes and provides JSON examples. Release notes list support for multiple tabs and windows, plus shortcuts for tab management. Cool Retro Term uses the QML port of qtermwidget, a terminal widget based on Konsole. Linux users can download an AppImage or find packages in repositories for distributions such as Ubuntu, Fedora, and Arch. macOS users can download a DMG. Build information covers Qt6 requirements, Linux Qt5 dependencies, and qmake instructions. Installation, build, theme, and widget guidance appears in the project wiki.