Cool-Retro-Term

Cool-Retro-Term is a terminal emulator program that gives you a terminal window which looks like your average terminal running on a computer monitor made between the late 1970s and the mid 1980s. You can choose which monitor you want it to mimic with a fair selection or profiles. It's a fun thing to play around with for about 3 minutes. It is not very usable as a regular terminal.

Features and usability

Cool-Retro-Term gives you a "retro" terminal window which functions the same as any other terminal such as konsole and xfce4-terminal. It just looks different than regular terminals running on your desktop. Some people will assume it's actually a real CRT monitor when you post screenshots of Cool-Retro-Term window.

You can right-click anywhere in the terminal window and get a menu where you can choose different display profiles such as Green Scanlines", Apple ][, Vintage and IBM DOS. There's also some Settings you can play around with.

Usability isn't there and it is not the purpose of this terminal, looking at it's output is not something you can stand using for very long. It looks retro and kind of cool and it's fun to use for about 3 minutes. It's also suitable for making cool-looking screenshots.

You can use it as a regular terminal if you prefer a terminal which look cool but isn't very usable since you will have a hard time reading the intentionally blurry output. cool-retro-term is built using a QML port of qtermwidget so it is actually a very solid terminal program below it's barely readable retro-looking output.

Installation

cool-retro-term is in most distributions repositories under that name. You can find compilation instructions, source code and a ready-to-use AppImage at https://github.com/Swordfish90/cool-retro-term if it is not in your distribution or you want the absolute latest version.

Sort by date Sort by score

Enable comment auto-refresher

You are ignoring the author of this comment

Show comment | Manage ignore list

Anonymous (eb39a2dbb4)

22 months ago

Score 0

It's amusing that you think you can only use this for three minutes, when it was all we had in the 80's and we used it all day long. I love this thing much more than is rational, but it is like having a time machine.

Permalink | Reply

You are ignoring the author of this comment

Show comment | Manage ignore list

Anonymous (ec1f25ab9c)

15 months ago

Score 0

I pranked my boss, I told him my new Mac had the screen broken.... he totally bought it.

Permalink | Reply

You are ignoring the author of this comment

Show comment | Manage ignore list

Anonymous (ec1f2f1901)

15 months ago

Score 0

I use it all the time for long periods of time, but I have toned down some of the effects.

Permalink | Reply

You are ignoring the author of this comment

Show comment | Manage ignore list

Anonymous (6ac421c826)

14 months ago

Score 0

I use it as my daily driver, BUT - I do have my own customized profile.

I have glare / blur / interference etc all disabled. I allow colored text hinting.

What I'm left with is a slightly curved terminal with one of the most readable fonts on EARTH.

That IBM mainframe font is incredible to do development in.

Permalink | Reply

You are ignoring the author of this comment

Show comment | Manage ignore list

Anonymous (22fd891104)

13 months ago

Score 0

I created a profile to look like my dear Amstrad CPC and another one to look like the AmigaShell. For the second one to be perfect, RCT just lacks the ability to color the cursor in another color than the text.

Otherwise it's perfect and I use it at work (with some effects toned down obviously).

Permalink | Reply

You are ignoring the author of this comment

Show comment | Manage ignore list

Anonymous (42814021a9)

3 months ago

Score 0

cool

Permalink | Reply

You are ignoring the author of this comment

Show comment | Manage ignore list

Anonymous (42814021a9)

3 months ago

Score 0

asdasd

Permalink | Reply

You are ignoring the author of this comment

Show comment | Manage ignore list

Anonymous (23f53b1488)

46 minutes ago

Score 0

This is very useable/readable. IDK what this article is on about.

Permalink | Reply

Add your comment

LinuxReviews welcomes all comments. If you do not want to be anonymous, register or log in. It is free.