Archives For November 30, 1999

Prompt, the container-oriented terminal emulator, now is re-named to Ptyxis!

GNOME Developer Christian Hergert announced the Prompt terminal emulator a few months ago. It “marries the best of GNOME Builder’s seamless container support, the beauty of GNOME Text Editor, and the robustness of VTE.” described in the blog post.

Due to name confusion to other product, the terminal emulator now has a new name called “Ptyxis”, according to this postThe extremely nice people at Panic let me know they had a product that might be confused with Prompt and I agreed it could be confusing.

image from blogs.gnome.org


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Alacritty, the popular free open-source GPU-accelerated terminal emulator, release new major 0.13.0 version few days ago.

The release introduced new features, including persist config option in hints config section, warnings for unused configuration file options, support for keybindings with dead keys, dynamically loading conpty.dll on Windows, as well as:

  • Back/Forward mouse buttons support in bindings
  • Copy global IPC options (-w -1) for new windows
  • Bindings to create and navigate tabs on macOS
  • Support startup notify protocol to raise initial window on Wayland/X11
  • Debug option prefer_egl to prioritize EGL over other display APIs
  • Inline vi-mode search using f/F/t/T
  • window.blur config option to request blur for transparent windows
  • --option argument for alacritty msg create-window
  • Support for DECRQM/DECRPM escape sequences
  • Support for kitty’s keyboard protocol

The release now uses TOML instead of YAML for configuration files. Run alacritty migrate command will automatically convert all the configuration files.

Other changes include:

  • Bundle mode-specific bindings in any mode.
  • Disable OSC 52 paste ability by default.
  • Deprecated draw_bold_text_with_bright_colors, key_bindings, and mouse_bindings.
  • Removed background_opacity, colors.search.bar, mouse.url, mouse.double_click.
  • See the github releases page for more.

How to Get Alacritty:

The Github releases page, provides official packages for Windows, MacOS, and Linux.

For Ubuntu users who are new to this terminal emulator, I’ve a tutorial teaching how to install Alacritty step by step.

Alacritty, is a free and open-source terminal emulator, written in Rust programming language. It works in Linux, Windows, MacOS, and uses OpenGL API for GPU hardware acceleration for fast response and high performance.

The terminal emulator features vi mode, allows to move around the viewport and scrollback using the keyboard. And, vi search and normal search for anything in the scrollback buffer.

Option 1: Install Alacritty via Snap package

For Ubuntu users, the easily way to install the terminal emulator is using the Snap package. It’s available in Ubuntu Software (App Center for 23.10), though run in sandbox.

Alacritty terminal emulator in App Center

Or, user can install it by running the command below in terminal:

snap install alacritty --classic

Option 2: Install Alacritty through Cargo (official)

The terminal emulator is also available to install through Cargo, the Rust package manager.

1. Just open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run command to install Cargo first:

sudo apt install cargo

2. Then, install the required dependency packages:

sudo apt install cmake pkg-config libfreetype6-dev libfontconfig1-dev libxcb-xfixes0-dev libxkbcommon-dev python3

3. Finally, use cargo to install the terminal package:

cargo install alacritty

When done, run ~/.cargo/bin/alacritty to start the terminal.

4. The cargo package manager does not install the desktop entry for Alacritty. So, you need to manually create one by running command:

nano ~/.local/share/applications/alacritty.desktop

Then, paste following lines in the terminal window:

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Exec=/home/ji/.cargo/bin/alacritty
Icon=alacritty
Terminal=false
Categories=System;TerminalEmulator;
Name=Alacritty
Comment=A fast, cross-platform, OpenGL terminal emulator
StartupNotify=true
StartupWMClass=Alacritty
Actions=New;

[Desktop Action New]
Name=New Terminal
Exec=/home/ji/.cargo/bin/alacrittyalacritty

NOTE: You need to replace ji to your username in the line above. Then, press Ctrl+S to save, and Ctrl+X to exit.


For the icon to display, run single command below to download img file and save to local icon folder:

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/alacritty/alacritty/master/extra/logo/compat/alacritty-term.png -O ~/.local/share/icons/alacritty.png

Or, you can download the icon from github web page and manually copy to .local/share/icons directory.

Option 3: Ubuntu PPA

For those who prefer the Ubuntu PPA repository, keep an eye on this launchpad page for all 3rd party PPAs.

Uninstall Alacritty

Depends on how you install the terminal emulator, either remove the Snap package from Ubuntu Software or by command:

snap remove alacritty

Or, run command to uninstall the cargo package:

cargo uninstall alacritty

You may also remove Cargo itself, if there’s no other rust packages installed, as well as some dev dependency libraries to free up some disk space.

sudo apt remove --autoremove cargo cmake pkg-config libfreetype6-dev libfontconfig1-dev libxcb-xfixes0-dev libxkbcommon-dev

Also remove the desktop entry (shortcut file) by running command:

rm ~/.local/share/icons/alacritty.png ~/.local/share/applications/alacritty.desktop

Want to let “Open in Terminal” context (right-click) menu option work for another terminal emulator? Here’s an extension to do the similar job for Nautilus.

When right-clicking on either a folder or blank area in file manager, there’s an “Open in Terminal” menu option to launch system default terminal with that folder as working directory.

The option in Ubuntu so far is provided by the built-in gnome-terminal package. Meaning no way to use the option for another terminal emulator. However, there’s an extension can add similar option to open terminal from in-side folder.

And not only for Gnome Terminal, the extension supports many other terminal emulators:

  • alacritty
  • blackbox
  • cool-retro-term
  • deepin-terminal
  • foot/footclient
  • guake
  • hyper
  • kermit
  • kgx (GNOME Console)
  • kitty
  • konsole
  • mate-terminal
  • mlterm
  • qterminal
  • sakura
  • st properly patched
  • tabby
  • terminator
  • terminology
  • termite
  • tilix (the package itself supports this stuff)
  • urxvt
  • urxvtc
  • wezterm
  • xfce4-terminal

The extension adds the menu option “Open XXX Here“, with XXX changes automatically according which terminal emulator is in use.

How to Install the Nautilus Extension

This tutorial is tested and works in Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 23.04, and Ubuntu 20.04. It should also work in Fedora Workstation and other Linux with GNOME & Nautilus.

1. First, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. Then run command to install git and python3-nautilus package:

sudo apt install git python3-nautilus

2. Then, clone the source code from Github project page, by running command:

git clone https://github.com/Stunkymonkey/nautilus-open-any-terminal.git

3. Finally, run the installer in the source code to install the extension:

cd nautilus-open-any-terminal && ./tools/update-extension-user.sh install

It installs the extension for current user only. If you would like to make it work for all users in system, run sudo ./tools/update-extension-system.sh install instead.

Apply and Set your Terminal Emulator

After installed the extension, apply it by running command to quit Nautilus:

nautilus -q

Then, open “Dconf Editor” (install it from Ubuntu Software) and navigate to ‘com/github/stunkymonkey/nautilus-open-any-terminal‘. Finally, set the value of ‘terminal’ to tell which terminal emulator to use.

You can of course choose another terminal emulator by running command (replace kgx with yours):

gsettings set com.github.stunkymonkey.nautilus-open-any-terminal terminal "kgx"

Tip: You may also remove the built-in ‘Open in Terminal’ option by running command:

sudo apt remove nautilus-extension-gnome-terminal

Uninstall

There seems no uninstaller script at the moment of writing. User can however manually removed the installed files by running command:

rm ~/.local/share/nautilus-python/extensions/open_any_terminal_extension.py
rm ~/.local/share/glib-2.0/schemas/com.github.stunkymonkey.nautilus-open-any-terminal.gschema.xml
rm ~/.local/share/locale/*/*/nautilus-open-any-terminal.mo

If you installed the extension system wide for all users, use the commands below instead to remove all the files:

sudo rm /usr/share/nautilus-python/extensions/open_any_terminal_extension.py
sudo rm /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/com.github.stunkymonkey.nautilus-open-any-terminal.gschema.xml
sudo rm /usr/share/locale/./*/*/nautilus-open-any-terminal.mo

Also quit file manager via nautilus -q command to apply change.

For those who want to install the latest Tilix terminal emulator 1.9.5 in Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. You can now get it from PPA repository.

Tilix is a popular tiling terminal emulator, that allows to split terminal window horizontally and/or vertically, and drag and drop re-arrange them. It also has many other great features including sync input between terminals, background images, quake mode (drop-down terminal), and custom hyperlinks.

The terminal emulator package is available in Ubuntu repository, but old. Though, the latest v1.9.5 has been released for 5 months. Changes in Tilix 1.9.5 include:

  • Disable advanced paste when there is no linebreak like iTerm2
  • Add environment variable when in quake mode
  • Add possibility to configure always enabled regex
  • And various bug-fixes.

1. Add PPA

The unofficial PPA so far contains the latest package for Ubuntu 22.04 only. Due to dependency issue, it does not build in Ubuntu 20.04.

To add the PPA, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal and run command:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/tilix

2. Update package cache

Ubuntu now automatically refresh the package cache while adding PPA. But, you have to run apt update command manually in some derivatives, e.g., Linux Mint.

sudo apt update

3. Install Tilix

Finally, install the software package by running command in terminal:

sudo apt install tilix

After installation, search for and open Tilix either from start menu or by searching from ‘Activities’ overview, depends on which DE you have.

How to Uninstall:

For any issue, you can install ppa-purge and use the tool to purge PPA. Which will also downgrade all installed packages from that PPA to the stock version in your Ubuntu:

sudo apt install ppa-purge && sudo ppa-purge ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/tilix

And if you need to terminal emulator any more, remove it either from Ubuntu Software or by running command in terminal:

sudo apt remove --autoremove tilix tilix-common

This simple tutorial shows how to change the default terminal emulator from Gnome Terminal to the one that you prefer in Ubuntu.

The default Gnome Terminal is great, but there are many good alternatives (e.g., tilix). If you prefer to use another one and want to set it as default, so you may press Ctrl+Alt+T to open it.

Step 1: Create symbolic link to x-terminal-emulator

Ubuntu seems default to x-terminal-emulator, which is a virtual package by default links to Gnome Terminal.

By creating a group of alternatives to the package allows to switch which one to use at any time with a single command.

Firstly, open terminal and run command to create a symbolic link (replace /usr/bin/tilix with your terminal emulator):

sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/x-terminal-emulator x-terminal-emulator /usr/bin/tilix 1

Some terminal emulators may already created the symbolic link automatically after installation, so you can just skip this step.

Step 2: Select your terminal to use as default:

Next, run the command below will output all available alternatives:

sudo update-alternatives --config x-terminal-emulator

Type the number for the one that you prefer and hit Enter will set it as default terminal.

In the case, I selected 5: ‘/usr/bin/tilix.wrapper’. It’s a Tilix wrapper with command line arguments that created automatically during installation. Step 1,

Restore and remove the alternative link:

To revert back to Gnome Terminal, just re-run the command in Step 2 and choose number 0 or 1.

And to remove the link created via Step 1, use command (replace ‘/usr/bin/tilix’ accordingly):

sudo update-alternatives --remove x-terminal-emulator /usr/bin/tilix

That’s all. Enjoy!

Tilix, the popular tiling terminal emulator, released v1.9.5 with a few new features and some bug-fixes.

Tilix is a GTK+3 terminal emulator supports for splitting app window horizontally or vertically. It supports drag and drop re-arranging terminals, quake mode, custom hyperlinks, as well as many other features.

After a year of development, it finally announced the new 1.9.5 with only a few new features due to lack of maintainers.

New features in Tilix 1.9.5 include:

  • Disable advanced paste when there is no linebreak like iTerm2
  • Add environment variable when in quake mode
  • Add possibility to configure always enabled regex

Get Tilix 1.9.5 in Ubuntu:

There’s no binary package for current Ubuntu releases so far, though it’s proposed to be included in Ubuntu 22.04 LTS repository.

User may download the source code and build manually via the link below:

KGX is a simple and user-friendly terminal emulator for GNOME. It aims to be a “Core” app for GNOME and Phosh, graphical shell for mobile devices like Purism’s Librem 5.

Rather than replacing GNOME Terminal, it’s on target to serve casual Linux user who rarely needs a terminal to carry out simple command line tasks. Via libhandy library, the terminal adjusts nicely to small screen sizes and for touch usage.

KGX terminal emulator. Image from thisweek.gnome.org

The name KGX is the station code for King’s Cross, the London terminus of the East Coast Main Line. The app is available in Ubuntu repositories since Ubuntu 21.04, though the package version is lag behind.

The stock KGX in Ubuntu 21.10 has a semi-transparent app window and the UI looks kinda like Gnome terminal. Though it’s lightweight and has less features.

KGX in Ubuntu 21.10

Install KGX in Ubuntu 21.10 / 22.04:

For Ubuntu 21.04, Ubuntu 21.10 and next Ubuntu 22.04, it’s easy to try out this terminal emulator by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard, and then run command in terminal to install it:

sudo apt install kgx

Then, search for and open the terminal emulator from activities overview.

While the stock package is always old, you may build it from source which is available at KGX project page.

When you run a command started with sudo in Ubuntu terminal, it asks you to insert the password for your user with no visual feedback as you type.

For beginners who feel uncomfortable with this terminal feature, below will teach you how to tweak your Ubuntu so that Gnome terminal (and TTY console) displays asterisks when you type in your password.

Terminal with password feedback by displaying asterisks

1. Press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open a terminal window. Or open terminal from Unity Dash.

2. Paste the below command in terminal and hit enter. Type in your password when prompt.

sudo visudo

It will open the configuration file “/etc/sudoers” in terminal with nano editor.

3. Make a new line:

Defaults        pwfeedback

under the line:

Defaults        env_reset

So it looks like this: (NOTE that the space between Defaults and pwfeedback should be a tab)

4. Now save the changes. Press Ctrl+X, type y to answer yes, press Enter to accept default file name.

Close this terminal window and done.

Fotoxx, a free and open source photo editing and collection management sofware for Linux. The new version has just been released with quite a few changes.

Changes in Fotoxx 13.07:

  • The gallery navigation has been extended with new options;
  • Effects > Drawing and Effects > Outline functions have been combined;
  • Batch Add Tags and Delete Tags have been combined into a more flexible tool;
  • Edit Collections has been made easier (add/delete/cut/copy/paste images);
  • The gallery of the newest images have been added to the database.
  • full changes in official announcement

The getdeb repository has updated this new release for Ubuntu 13.04 Raring and 12.04 Precise users. You can follow the below steps to install or upgrade:

1.) Download and double-click on the getdeb package to add the repository to your system.

Download & install GetDeb repository

2.) If you installed Synaptic Package Manager, open it, then Reload and finally search and install Fotoxx package.

If not, run this command in terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T):

sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get install fotoxx

Enjoy!