Cool Retro Term vs Sakura
Cool Retro Term
github.comSakura
pleyades.netSide by side
| Figure | Cool Retro Term | Sakura |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | — |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 1 | 0 |
| Spec score · Terminal Emulators | 8.8 (#2) | 7.2 (#39) |
| Spec score · Terminal apps | 8.0 (#24) | 6.9 (#41) |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Keyboard shortcuts | The 2.0.0-beta2 release notes list tab management shortcuts. | Default shortcuts include creating and closing tabs, copying and pasting text, naming tabs, moving between tabs, and toggling the scrollbar. |
| Maker | The GitHub account identifies Swordfish90 as Filippo Scognamiglio and lists Pavia, Italy. | The maker's homepage identifies David Gómez as its owner and says he works as a translator rather than a programmer these days. |
| Purpose | Cool Retro Term is a terminal emulator designed to mimic the look and feel of old cathode tube screens. | Sakura is a GTK and libvte terminal emulator with few dependencies, designed to provide a terminal without requiring a full GNOME desktop. |
| Support | The project wiki provides installation and Linux/macOS build instructions, theme guidance, and information about the terminal widget. | Launchpad provides bug reporting and a question-and-answer section for the project. |
| Supported platforms | linux,macos | Linux |
| Tabs | The 2.0.0-beta2 release added tab-management shortcuts. | It uses tabs to provide several terminals in one window. |
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.