st
The suckless simple terminal, a minimal X terminal emulator configured by editing its source code.
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About st
st (simple terminal) is a small terminal emulator for X from the suckless project. It was written as a reaction to the size and complexity of xterm, and its codebase is kept deliberately small.
It supports most VT10X escape sequences, UTF-8 and wide characters, 256 colors and true color, antialiased and fallback fonts, clipboard handling and serial lines. You change settings such as shortcuts by editing config.h and recompiling. Extra features such as scrollback are added through community patches.
Strengths
- Very small, readable codebase
- True color and UTF-8 support
- Community patches for extra features
Limitations
- Configuration requires editing C source and recompiling
- Scrollback and many features need third-party patches
- X11 only
Details
- Pricing
- FreeFree to download and build from source.
- License
- Open source, license not stated
- Developer
- suckless.org
- Platforms
- Linux
- How it runs
- Downloadable app
- Account
- Not required
- Works offline
- Yes
- Best suited for
- Minimalists and dwm users comfortable compiling their own tools
- Categories
- Terminals
- Last verified
- Added
- Provenance
- Facts checked against the developer's own pages and store listings, 1 sources on file.
Alternatives to st
Compare allSoftware that can replace st for an important use case, and what changes if you switch.
xterm
The long-running terminal emulator for the X Window System, with DEC VT and Tektronix compatibility.
xterm is the long-running X11 terminal with thorough DEC VT and Tektronix emulation, configured through X resources instead of recompiling C source, and it also has no tabs.
Alacritty
A deliberately minimal OpenGL terminal that leaves multiplexing and tabs to other programs and just draws text fast.
Alacritty is a minimal Apache-2.0 OpenGL terminal configured through a file rather than source code, running on Linux, macOS, Windows and BSD, with no tabs by design.
foot
A fast, lightweight and minimalistic terminal emulator built for Wayland on Linux and FreeBSD.
foot is a fast, minimal terminal for Wayland on Linux and FreeBSD, so it suits Wayland desktops where st's X11-only design does not.
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 built-in tabs, splits, graphics and scrollback, configured in a text file without recompiling.
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 thorough emulation and a single readable config file, larger than st but needing no patches.
LXTerminal
A lightweight VTE-based terminal emulator from the LXDE project with tab support.
LXTerminal is a lightweight VTE-based terminal with tabs and low memory use, configured without editing source code.
Terminology
A terminal emulator for Linux and BSD built on the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries, with inline media previews.
Terminology is an EFL-based terminal for Linux and BSD running on X11, Wayland or framebuffer, with inline media previews and compressed scrollback built in.
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 with tabs, unlimited scrollback and a preferences shortcut editor, so no source patching is needed for common features.
Similar software
Related functionality, not necessarily a direct replacement.
tmux
Keeps terminal sessions alive on a server after you disconnect, and splits one window into many.
GNU Screen
A terminal multiplexer that runs several shell sessions in one window and keeps them alive after disconnecting.
Nerd Fonts
A collection of programming fonts patched with thousands of icons, plus a patcher for adding them to other fonts.
Zellij
A terminal multiplexer that tells you its own shortcuts on screen, so you can use it on day one.
