Cool Retro Term vs Termalin

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.

Termalin is an SSH client for people and AI agents, combining terminal sessions, file tools, database access, and agent connections. Its terminal offers xterm-256color sessions, browser-style tabs, a hosts sidebar, snippets, and session restoration with scrollback. File tools include SFTP, FTP, and S3 browsers, an editor, and a dual-pane transfer manager. The database client supports 13 engines, including PostgreSQL, MySQL/MariaDB, SQLite, MongoDB, Redis, and SQL Server. Its MCP server lets agents open sessions, run commands, work with files over SFTP, and join live sessions while users watch. A web cabinet provides terminal, file-browser, and recording-replay access without installing the app. Termalin lists API, iOS, Linux, macOS, web, and Windows platforms. The free plan includes SSH and SFTP; Pro costs $8/user/mo (annual), and a 14-day trial is listed. The Windows .exe is not code-signed and may show an unknown-publisher warning; the Microsoft Store build is signed.