foot vs Launchy

foot is a free Linux terminal emulator for Wayland, with native Wayland support and no dependence on a particular desktop environment. Its server mode lets multiple terminal windows share one process, fonts, and glyph cache. Display features include configurable font fallback, on-the-fly font and DPI adjustment, color emoji, true color, and Sixel images. Users can search scrollback and detect URLs with the keyboard. The feature list also includes SSH support, scripting, text input through text-input-v3, and multi-seat support. Shell integration can open new terminals in the current working directory when the shell supports OSC 7; OSC 133 enables prompt navigation. URLs open with xdg-open by default, and the command can be changed in configuration. Configuration uses a foot.ini file in the user's XDG configuration directory. Installation guidance describes building with Meson and Ninja, with Wayland protocols and ncurses among the requirements. The project says foot is MIT-licensed. Its installation guide notes that full PGO builds using the real binary must run in a Wayland session.

Launchy is a free utility for opening programs, files, folders, and websites with a few keystrokes. It indexes start-menu programs and can search directories and file types that users add. It stays in the background until the hotkey is pressed: Alt+Space by default, or Control+Space on Linux. Users can customize its appearance with skins and extend it through plugins for web searches, calculations, custom commands, and bookmark access. Other listed plugin examples include PuTTY sessions, task switching, and system power controls; these are made by other developers, and Launchy does not guarantee their functionality or behavior. Portable mode stores configuration files in the directory where Launchy runs, so it can be used from a USB stick. The bundled Calcy calculator supports addition, division, subtraction, multiplication, and parentheses. The listed platforms are Android, Linux, macOS, and Windows. Launchy is free to download with no fixed price; the listed recommended value is $10 USD, and the plan notes suggest considering a $3 contribution.