Linux

Ptyxis – terminal for a container-oriented desktop

Ptyxis is a terminal for GNOME with first-class support for containers.

Flatpak is the intended and preferred distribution mechanism.

This is free and open source software.

Key Features

  • Built-in support for profiles allows for many of those preferences to be tweaked on a more fine-grained basis.
  • Specify a default container per-profile or to inherit the current terminal’s container.
  • Flatpak’able without losing features! This works through the use of a specialized ptyxis-agent that runs on the host to provide Ptyxis the ability to create PTY devices which integrate better with containers.
  • A number of palettes are provided with native support for light/dark mode and can update with your desktop style preference.
  • Due to how ptyxis-agent works, it can perform various foreground process tracking for things like sudo or SSH without significant overhead. This requires some improvements in various container systems which is in the process of merging at the time of writing.
  • Tab overview using modern libadwaita features.
  • Transparency support does exist but must be tweaked manually using GSettings until better transitions can be implemented in libadwaita.
  • Use of libadwaita “Toasts” to notify the user when the clipboard has been updated as well as other operations.
  • Various tweaks to how VTE draws which are performed by rewriting the retained render tree. This allows for appropriate padding around the terminal while still keeping scrollback from looking cut off.
  • User customizable keyboard shortcuts.
  • “Single application mode” allows you to run an application in a ptyxis instance but just for that command. Useful when integrating with .desktop files containing Terminal=true.
  • Pinned tab profile/container/directory are saved across sessions so that you can get back to your projects quickly. Currently this is restricted to a single window but may change in the future.
  • ptyxis-agent will automatically create systemd scopes for your tab when available to help reduce the chances that the whole app would be killed by the OOM killer instead of the tab taking up resources.
  • An terminal inspector to help you debug issues when writing applications for the terminal.
  • There are situations where users have particular needs for integrating with external systems. Preferences allow for tweaking a number of these compatibility options.

Website: gitlab.gnome.org/chergert/ptyxis
Support:
Developer: Christian Hergert
License: GNU General Public License v3.0

Ptyxis in action

Ptyxis is written in C. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials.


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