Alternatives to foot
A fast, lightweight and minimalistic terminal emulator built for Wayland on Linux and FreeBSD. The listings below can replace it for an important use case. Each note says what changes if you switch.
The original
foot
A fast, lightweight and minimalistic terminal emulator built for Wayland on Linux and FreeBSD.
Replacements
Listings that take over the same core job as foot.
Alacritty
A deliberately minimal OpenGL terminal that leaves multiplexing and tabs to other programs and just draws text fast.
Alacritty is a minimal OpenGL terminal that also runs on X11, macOS and Windows, but still describes itself as beta.
kitty
GPU-accelerated terminal with tabs, splits, graphics and a kitten scripting system.
kitty adds tabs, splits and an inline image protocol with GPU rendering on Linux and macOS, at the cost of more complexity.
Ghostty
A GPU-accelerated terminal that uses the real native interface of the platform instead of drawing its own.
Ghostty adds GPU rendering with native window chrome on Linux and macOS and can be embedded through libghostty.
WezTerm
A GPU-accelerated terminal that is also a multiplexer, configured in Lua and the same on every platform.
WezTerm adds built-in multiplexing and Lua configuration across Windows, macOS and Linux, maintained largely by one person.
COSMIC Terminal
The terminal emulator for the COSMIC desktop, with GPU rendering, ligatures and bidirectional text.
COSMIC Terminal is a GPU-rendered Linux terminal with ligatures and bidirectional text, designed for the COSMIC desktop.
GNOME Console
A simple, user-friendly terminal emulator that is the default terminal on newer GNOME desktops.
GNOME Console is a simple default terminal for newer GNOME desktops, with fewer customization options but desktop integration.
Xfce Terminal
The lightweight terminal emulator of the Xfce desktop, with tabs and a drop-down window mode.
Xfce Terminal is a lightweight Linux terminal that adds tabs and a drop-down window mode, fitting best on Xfce.
st
The suckless simple terminal, a minimal X terminal emulator configured by editing its source code.
st is a similarly minimal terminal but runs on X11 only and is configured by editing C source and recompiling.
Also worth comparing
These listings name foot as their own alternative, so the relationship runs both ways.
LXTerminal
A lightweight VTE-based terminal emulator from the LXDE project with tab support.
foot is a fast, minimal terminal for Wayland only, with no X11 support and no tabs.
QTerminal
A lightweight Qt terminal emulator maintained by the LXQt desktop project.
foot is a fast, minimal Wayland-only terminal without tabs, lighter still but lacking QTerminal's split panes.
Terminology
A terminal emulator for Linux and BSD built on the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries, with inline media previews.
foot is a fast, minimal terminal for Wayland only, with no X11 or framebuffer support, no tabs and no media previews, but frequent releases.
xterm
The long-running terminal emulator for the X Window System, with DEC VT and Tektronix compatibility.
foot is a fast, minimal terminal for Wayland rather than X11, so moving to it also means running a Wayland desktop on Linux or FreeBSD.
Similar software
Related functionality, not a direct replacement.
tmux
Keeps terminal sessions alive on a server after you disconnect, and splits one window into many.
Zellij
A terminal multiplexer that tells you its own shortcuts on screen, so you can use it on day one.
Nerd Fonts
A collection of programming fonts patched with thousands of icons, plus a patcher for adding them to other fonts.
Gogh
A collection of hundreds of terminal color schemes, installed into your terminal with a single command.
