Alternatives to Ptyxis
A GNOME terminal designed for container-oriented desktops with Podman, Toolbox and Distrobox support. The listings below can replace it for an important use case. Each note says what changes if you switch.
The original
Ptyxis
A GNOME terminal designed for container-oriented desktops with Podman, Toolbox and Distrobox support.
Replacements
Listings that take over the same core job as Ptyxis.
GNOME Terminal
The long-standing VTE-based terminal emulator for the GNOME desktop on Linux.
GNOME Terminal is the long-standing GPL-3.0 VTE-based terminal for GNOME, with a conservative feature set and no built-in awareness of Podman, Toolbox or Distrobox containers.
GNOME Console
A simple, user-friendly terminal emulator that is the default terminal on newer GNOME desktops.
GNOME Console is the simple default terminal on newer GNOME desktops, with far fewer customization options and no container-specific features like Ptyxis's Toolbox support.
Tilix
A tiling terminal emulator for Linux using GTK 3, with split panes and saved sessions.
Tilix is an MPL-2.0 GTK 3 tiling terminal for Linux with split panes and saved session layouts, though the project is looking for new maintainers.
Terminator
A Linux terminal emulator that arranges several GNOME terminals in grids of split panes within one window.
Terminator arranges several GNOME terminals in grids of split panes on Linux and can be scripted through remotinator, but it lacks container integration.
Konsole
KDE's terminal emulator for running a command shell, with tabs, profiles, bookmarks and output search.
Konsole is KDE's terminal with tabs, profiles, activity monitoring and output search, designed around Plasma rather than GNOME, and it also has Windows and macOS builds.
Ghostty
A GPU-accelerated terminal that uses the real native interface of the platform instead of drawing its own.
Ghostty is an MIT-licensed GPU-accelerated terminal for macOS and Linux with native window chrome and a single text config file, but no built-in container awareness.
kitty
GPU-accelerated terminal with tabs, splits, graphics and a kitten scripting system.
kitty is a GPL-3.0 GPU-accelerated terminal for macOS and Linux with tabs, splits, inline images and kittens, configured through a text file instead of a GTK interface.
Alacritty
A deliberately minimal OpenGL terminal that leaves multiplexing and tabs to other programs and just draws text fast.
Alacritty is a minimal cross-platform OpenGL terminal with no tabs by design, so you would rely on tmux or your window manager instead.
Similar software
Related functionality, not a direct replacement.
Guake
A Python-based drop-down terminal for GNOME, modelled on the console in Quake.
Tilda
A GTK drop-down terminal for Linux that slides in from the screen edge on a hotkey.
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.
podman-tui
A terminal user interface for managing Podman containers, images and other resources on local or remote machines.
