foot
A fast, lightweight and minimalistic terminal emulator built for Wayland on Linux and FreeBSD.
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About foot
foot is a terminal emulator made only for Wayland compositors. It aims to be fast and light on resources, and the repository includes published benchmark results. It is written in C and runs on Linux and FreeBSD.
Development is active on Codeberg, with frequent commits and around 70 tagged releases. It suits people running a Wayland compositor such as Sway who want a small, quick terminal configured through a text file. It does not run under X11.
Strengths
- Fast and light on resources
- Native Wayland support
- Actively developed with frequent releases
Limitations
- Wayland only, no X11 support
- Minimal by design, with no tabs
Details
- Pricing
- FreeFree and open source.
- License
- Open source, license not stated
- Developer
- Daniel Eklöf
- Platforms
- Linux
- How it runs
- Downloadable app
- Account
- Not required
- Works offline
- Yes
- Best suited for
- Wayland desktop users who want a fast, minimal terminal
- Categories
- Terminals
- Last verified
- Added
- Provenance
- Facts checked against the developer's own pages and store listings, 1 sources on file.
Alternatives to foot
Compare allSoftware that can replace foot for an important use case, and what changes if you switch.
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.
foot as an alternative
Listings that name foot as an alternative.
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 necessarily a direct replacement.
tmux
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Zellij
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Nerd Fonts
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Gogh
A collection of hundreds of terminal color schemes, installed into your terminal with a single command.
