When I first started using Linux, I did not care much about the terminal applications. Not in the sense that I was not using the terminal but more like I never cared about trying other terminal application (or terminal emulators, if you want to use the correct technical term.)

I mean, why would I? The magic is in the commands you run, after all. How does it matter if it's the default terminal that comes with the system or something else?

Most terminals are pretty much the same, or so it feels. But still, there are numerous terminal emulators available for Linux. Perhaps they are more in number than the Arch-based distros.

Last year, HashiCorp founder Mitchell Hashimoto developed another new terminal called Ghostty. And it took the developer world by storm. It seemed like everyone was talking about it.

But that didn't bother me much. I attributed all the buzz around Ghostty to the Hashimoto's stature, never cared about trying it until last month.

And when I tried it, I discovered a few features that I think makes it a favorite for pro terminal dwellers. If videos are your thing, this video shows Ghostty features in action.

What makes Ghostty special?

Ghostty is a relatively new terminal emulator for Linux and macOS, that provides a platform native UI and GPU acceleration.

Easy to use configuration

Ghostty does not require a configuration file to work. This is one of the cool features for a terminal emulator that comes with no GUI-based settings manager.

It's not that you cannot edit the config file. It's just that the defaults are so good, you can just get on with your commands.

For example, Ghostty supports nerd-fonts by default. So, your glyph characters and funny CLI tools like Starship prompt will just work out-of-the-box in Ghostty.

Editing the configuration file of Ghostty is very simple; even for less tech-savvy people. The configuration file, usually stored at ~/.config/ghostty/config, is just a plain text file with a bunch of key-value pairs.

Let's say you want to hide the mouse while typing. You just add this line to the config file:

mouse-hide-while-typing = true

And reload the config with Ctrl+Shift+, or choosing the option from hamburger menu.

How will you know what key-value you can use in Ghostty? Well, Ghostty keeps a fantastic, easy to understand documentation.

You can start reading this doc, understand what a key is all about, and then add it to the config. It's that simple!

Windows, tabs, splits and overview

If you have used Kitty, you probably are aware of the various windows and split options. Ghostty provides a very similar experience. I won't deny, Ghostty borrows a lot of features from Kitty.

So, here, you have one main window, and can have multiple tabs. Almost every terminal has multiple tab options these days. But Ghostty also allows you to have multiple window splits.

It's not as effective as using Tmux or screen command but this is good if you want to use multiple terminals in the same screen. A feature that made Terminator a popular choice a decade ago.

This window split is mostly inclined to power users, who want to control multiple things at the same time. You can use keyboard shortcuts or the menu.

Another interesting feature in this section is the tab overview. You can click on the overview button on the top bar.

This is convenient, as this intuitive look introduces some kind of organization to your terminal usage. Somewhat like GNOME overview.

More importantly, you can search tabs as well! As you can see in the above screenshot, there is a proper name for each tab that was automatically assigned based on the last command you ran. So, if you ever reach a point where like browser tabs, you have numerous terminal tabs opened, you can search for it relatively easier ;)

This overview feature is also available through keyboard shortcuts and that is my next favorite Ghostty feature in this list.

Trigger Sequence Shortcuts

There are a whole lot of actions properly documented on the Ghostty documentation for you. These can be assigned to various keybindings of your preference.

Ghostty keybindings will allow you to assign trigger sequences, which Vim users are familiar with. That is, you can use a trigger shortcut and then enter another key to complete the action. For example, in my Ghostty config, I have set:

keybind = ctrl+a>o=toggle_tab_overview

What this does is, I can press ctrl+a and then press o to open the tab overview! How cool is that, to have a familiar workflow everywhere!

Custom keybindings are also placed in Ghostty config file.

Action Reference - Keybindings

Reference of all Ghostty keybinding actions.

Ghostty

Performable Keybindings

This is a new feature introduced in version 1.2.0. With performable keybinding, you can assign a keyboard shortcut to multiple action. But the keybinding is activated only if the action is able to be performed.

The Ghostty team itself provides a convenient example of how this works:

keybind = performable:ctrl+c=copy_to_clipboard

What it does is, use Ctrl+C to copy text only when there is something selected and available to copy. Otherwise, it works as the interrupt signal! No more accidental interrupts when you try to copy something.

Kind of difficult for me to show it in the screenshot and thus I'll skip adding any image to this section.

Image support

Not all terminals come with image protocol support. Only a few do. One of them is Kitty, which developed its own image rendering protocol, the Kitty Image Protocol. Ghostty implements the same Kitty Image Protocol in the terminal so that you can view images right from the terminal.

Now, a simple user may not find the use of images support in the terminal. But there are a few use cases of image support. Simply speaking, this image rendering helps Ghostty to display images in fun tool like Fastfetch to reading manga right-within the terminal.

Watch our video on fun stuff you can do in Linux terminal.

Ligature and fancy fonts

Ghostty also has ligature support. Now what is the purpose of ligatures, and what is its use within the terminal?

If you are into coding, there are symbols that are a combination of two symbols. Let's say, "Not equal to", usually denoted as != but mathematically displayed as ≠ . Now, with a ligature supported terminal, you will get the proper symbol for this operation. See the difference for yourself.

This makes code more human readable and understandable.

Built-in themes with light and dark variant

With Ghostty, you have no reason to search the web for color schemes. There is a huge list of color schemes, baked right in to the application. All you have to do is, note its name and use it in the config.

To list all the available color schemes/themes, use the command:

ghostty +list-themes

This new interface lists every theme available, along with a live preview. Note the name of a theme from the left sidebar. Use q to exit the preview.

Let's say I want to use the Adventure dark theme. All I have to do is to add a line in the config:

theme = Adventure

There are light and dark variants of themes available to choose from. You can define themes for both light and dark mode. So if you system uses dark mode, the terminal theme will be the one you chose for dark mode and vice versa.

theme = dark:Moonkai Pro Machine,light:Catppuccin Latte

How does it matter? Well, operating systems these days also come with feature that automatically switches between dark and light modes based on the time of the day. And if you opt for that feature, you'll have a better dark/light experience with Ghostty.

Native UI

Many apps use the same frameworks on all the operating system and that might not blend well. This is specially true for applications built on top of Electron framework often look out of place in Linux.

Ghostty for Linux is developed using the GTK4 toolkit, which makes it looks native in various Linux distributions. Popular distributions like Ubuntu, Fedora, etc uses GNOME as their default desktop offering. Thus, you will get a familiar look and feel for the window, along with overall system uniqueness.

On macOS, Ghosttty app is built using Swift, AppKit, and SwiftUI, with real native macOS components like native tabs, native splits, native windows, menu bars, and a proper settings GUI.

Installing Ghostty on Linux

If you are an Arch Linux user, Ghostty is available in the official repository. You can install it using the pacman command:

sudo pacman -Syu ghostty

For Ubuntu users, there is an unofficial user-maintained repository, offering deb files. You can download it from the releases page.

You can check other official installation methods in the installation manual.

Wrapping Up

If you are new to Ghostty and want to get an overview of the config file format, you can refer to our sample Ghostty configuration. Don't forget to read the README!

Ghostty indeed is a worthy choice if you are looking for some all-rounder terminal emulators. But only if you are looking for one because most of the time, the default terminal works just fine. With a little configuration tweaking, you could get many of the discussed Ghostty features, too. Take KDE's Konsole terminal customization as an example.

What's your take on Ghostty? Is it worth a try or would you rather stick with your current terminal choice? Share your views in the comments please.

Ghostty has recently emerged as a highly popular terminal emulator, gaining a strong following among developers and power users alike. This rapid rise can be attributed to its impressive performance and a rich feature set, like leveraging GPU acceleration for incredibly fast rendering and a smooth user experience, even with demanding tasks.

Performance is one thing. Ghostty also comes with a comprehensive theming system, offering a vast collection of built-in themes, which can also be previewed even before you apply them. That's cool. That's a really cool feature.

After fiddling with Kitty terminal, I am exploring Ghostty terminal these days and decided to share some of my exploits on It's FOSS.

And hence this article, where I'll show how you can change themes in the Ghostty terminal, even the external ones. Later, I'll share some of my favorite Ghostty themes that will make your terminal both aesthetically pleasing and extremely readable.

But first, learn to preview a theme in Ghostty

Ghostty has a neat theme preview system built-in. Open the terminal and run:

ghostty +list-themes

This opens the theme preview, from which you can note the name of a theme you like. You cannot set a theme from here but if you have the name, you can use it in the config as I show in the next section.

Use the / key to start a search. Press Ctrl+C to close the theme preview.

Next, learn to change themes in Ghostty

Ghostty has relatively straight-forward text-based configuration. All you need is a configuration file called config at ~/.config/ghostty.

Create this file if it does not exist.

mkdir -p ~/.config/ghostty
nano ~/.config/ghostty/config

Add the name of the theme of your choice in the following manner:

theme = "<name-of-the-theme>"

Save the file. Restart the Ghostty terminal to see the theme effect.

Quotes are needed for themes that have spaces in their names. An example:

theme = "Apple Classic"

Let's see it in action where I change the Ghostty theme to Apple Classic.

What about external themes?

Didn't spot the theme of your choice in Ghostty built-in? You can download a color scheme of your choice or create one from scratch!

The condition is that the theme files should be present in the ~/.config/ghostty/themes directory.

Once the theme file is placed in its location, open the Ghostty config file and add the line in the same manner:

theme = "<theme-file-name>"

Restoring the default theme

Don't like the theme you changed to and want to go back to the original default theme instead of trying random themes until you find a suitable one? All you have to do is to revert the changes you made earlier.

How do you do that? Just remove the theme = theme-name from the ~/.config/ghostty/config file. Or, just comment it out by adding # in front of that line.

Cool Ghostty Themes

Now that you are familiar with the basics, let's see some cool Ghostty themes I like and perhaps you can give them a try.

1. Monokai Classic

Monokai Classic is a visually pleasing color scheme that is pretty popular among developers. If you like colored terminals with syntax highlighting and fun Linux tools such as eza, Monokai Classic is a must-checkout theme.

Theme code:

theme = "Monokai Classic"

2. Monokai Pro

Yes, when it comes to standout colors, Monokai variants just excel. No wonder developers often use these themes frequently. Monokai Pro is an enhanced version of the classic Monokai theme with refined colors and improved contrast for professional development work.

Theme code:

theme = "Monokai Pro"

3. ayu

A minimalist dark theme with subtle red and blue accents, designed for extended coding sessions with reduced eye strain. If you use prompts like Starship or tools like Ohmyzsh, this theme does a pretty good job with the colors.

Theme code:

theme = ayu

4. GitHub Dark Default

For those who use GitHub so often and love the default color schemes used in GitHub, this is a nice choice to consider. The scheme focuses on better contrast, and the dark mode blends pretty neatly with the rest of the colors.

Theme code:

theme = GitHub-Dark-Default

5. Catppuccin Mocha

Who doesn't love the Catppuccin themes? What makes Catppuccin special is its consistency across development tools; you can theme your entire workflow with matching colors, creating a cohesive and calming development environment.

In Ghostty, you can install this theme with just one line in your config.

If you are using Starship, go for the Catppuccin Mocha preset.

Theme code:

theme = catppuccin-mocha

6. Desert

Desert is not a super dark theme; it is more like a warm dark theme with a matching color palette. You still get pretty neat contrast colors for better syntax highlighting and readability. The Starship Gruvbox prompt theme is a perfect prompt match for this theme.

Theme code:

theme = Desert

7. Nordfox

Nord theme has a special fan following! Like Catppuccin, the Nord color scheme also has a wide presence across many tools. So, if you are one looking to build a unique work environment, Nordfox is an interesting choice.

Theme code:

theme = nordfox

8. Adwaita Dark

If you are a GNOME user, this can be the best theme to choose for a cohesive desktop experience. Given you like Vanilla GNOME, this theme will match your system perfectly and look consistent across all your applications.

Theme code:

theme = "Adwaita Dark"

9. Synthwave

A fun, dark theme with some bright neon color palettes. It's perfect if you want your terminal to look cool while coding games or creative projects.

Theme code:

theme = synthwave

10. Ayu Light

The light version of the ayu theme. It has clean whites and soft colors that work well in bright rooms or during daytime coding.

Theme code:

theme = ayu_light

11. Primary

A simple, clean light theme focused on clarity. It's great for reading documentation or any work where you need crystal-clear text. It is challenging to create a perfectly read-friendly light theme, and Primary has done a fantastic job with the color choices.

Theme code:

theme = primary

12. Tinacious Design Light

This is some creative color choice to select. Especially the blue ones, which, if not chosen correctly, can easily make text unreadable in a white background. But this theme has all done well with the colors. It should be one of the choices for bright theme lovers!

Theme code:

theme = "Tinacious Design (Light)"

13. Catppuccin Latte

Light or dark, Catppuccin is unavoidable. Latte is the only light theme variant from Catppuccin, and to me, this appears to have more identifiable colors than the dark one. Each color is perfectly visible in all cases. I suggest you use the Catppuccin starship preset theme along with this for a proper terminal experience.

Theme code:

theme = catppuccin-latte

14. One Half Light

A balanced light theme that's bright but not harsh. The colors are chosen carefully so you can read for long periods without eye strain.

Theme code:

theme = OneHalfLight

Wrapping Up

Ghostty provides plenty of built-in themes, as you can see from the first section. You can set any theme, even a custom-designed one.

Most of the themes provided by Ghostty are beautiful-looking, and if you scroll through them one at a time, you can find some eccentric color choices as well!

If you are a Kitty user, you may recall the kitten themes command to get a similar interactive theme selector. But, in Kitty, you can easily press enter on a theme to modify the config and apply the theme. That handy feature is absent here, unfortunately.

I let you experiment with Ghostty themes and if you are interested, you can also explore some beautiful themes for VS Code 😸

Microsoft hat mit Edit einen neuen, quelloffenen Texteditor für die Kommandozeile vorgestellt. Das unter der MIT-Lizenz veröffentlichte Projekt ist nicht nur für Windows, sondern auch für Linux verfügbar. Zudem nicht nur für PCs, sondern auch für die ARM64-Architektur, wie sie auf dem Raspberry Pi genutzt wird. Der Editor richtet sich an Nutzer, die ein einfaches, schnelles Werkzeug für das Bearbeiten von Textdateien im Terminal suchen. Microsofts Edit reiht sich irgendwo zwischen Nano, Micro oder Kilo ein.

Kompakter Editor für den Terminaleinsatz

Edit ist ein schlanker Editor mit Text User Interface (TUI), der insbesondere auf Portabilität und geringe Abhängigkeiten ausgelegt ist. Die Software setzt auf eine eigene TUI-Bibliothek, die laut Projektentwickler besser zu einer geplanten Plugin-Schnittstelle auf Basis einer C-ABI passt. Außerdem wurde Wert auf UTF-8-Unterstützung, kompakte Dateigröße, VT-kompatible Ausgabe (für bessere SSH-Kompatibilität) und statische Kompilierung gelegt. So lässt sich das Programm ohne Abhängigkeiten ausführen.

Der Editor wurde in Rust geschrieben, nachdem erste Prototypen in C, C++ und Zig entstanden waren. Die Entscheidung für Rust fiel, weil die Sprache innerhalb Microsofts bereits offiziell unterstützt wird und sich gut für systemnahe Programmierung eignet. Der Editor ist natürlich für Windows-Admins interessant, weil man sich seit Windows 10/Windows Server 2019 via SSH auch auf Windows-Kisten einloggen kann. Für administrative Aufgaben braucht es dann auch einen effektiven Editor.

Veröffentlichung auf GitHub

Der Quellcode sowie vorkompilierte Binaries sind auf GitHub unter github.com/microsoft/edit verfügbar. Für Linux steht ein statisch gelinktes Binary bereit, das ohne weitere Abhängigkeiten ausgeführt werden kann:

$ wget https://github.com/microsoft/edit/releases/download/v1.0.0/edit-1.0.0-x86_64-linux-gnu.xz
$ unxz edit-1.0.0-x86_64-linux-gnu.xz
$ chmod +x edit-1.0.0-x86_64-linux-gnu
$ ./edit-1.0.0-x86_64-linux-gnu

Im Arch User Repository (AUR) stehen mehrere inoffizielle Pakete zur Verfügung, unter anderem edit, ms-edit, ms-edit-bin und microsoft-edit. Ich möchte hier keine Empfehlung ausgeben, mit Sicherheit wird hier in den nächsten Tagen ein wenig aufgeräumt. Dazu kommen Kochrezepte mit der Endung -git, die das Programm aus dem Quellcode bauen.

$ yay -Ss microsoft edit
aur/edit 1.0.0-1 (+0 0.00) 
    A simple editor for simple needs (Microsoft Edit)
aur/ms-edit 1.0.0-1 (+1 1.00) 
    A simple editor for simple needs (Microsoft Edit)
aur/ms-edit-git 1.0.0.r1.ge8d40f6-1 (+2 1.98) 
    A simple editor for simple needs (Microsoft Edit)
aur/ms-edit-bin 1.0.0-1 (+3 2.99) 
    A simple editor for simple needs (Microsoft Edit)
aur/microsoft-edit-git 1.0.0.r1.ge8d40f6-2 (+1 1.00) 
    Modern version of the MS-DOS Editor with a modern UI and keybindings similar to VS Code
aur/microsoft-edit 1.0.0-2 (+2 1.99) 
    Modern version of the MS-DOS Editor with a modern UI and keybindings similar to VS Code

Entwicklung aus Eigeninitiative

Der Editor entstand im Rahmen eines internen Microsoft-Projekts, wurde jedoch größtenteils in der Freizeit des Entwicklers umgesetzt. In einem ausführlichen Kommentar auf Hacker News beschreibt der Autor Hintergründe zur Entstehung, den Technologiestack sowie die Beweggründe für die Eigenentwicklung anstelle der Verwendung bestehender TUI-Editoren. Einen neuen Editor für Linux-User zu schaffen, stand allerdings nicht auf dem Zettel. /s

Ziel sei es unter anderem gewesen, ein möglichst kleines Binary mit guter Unicode-Unterstützung bereitzustellen, das systemnah arbeitet und sich auch für automatisierte Systemumgebungen oder Remote-Shells eignet. Ob sich Edit langfristig gegen etablierte Editoren behaupten kann, bleibt abzuwarten. Der Fokus auf Minimalismus, Portabilität und UTF-8-Kompatibilität dürfte insbesondere in reduzierten oder serverseitigen Umgebungen relevant sein.

I found it cool enough to watch someone, often portrayed as a hacker, use the Linux terminal, especially in the movies. What if I try to become one of the super cool hackers from the Hollywood movies? 😎

Now that I'm older, I'm no longer fooled by those movie skits 😌 But, I'm still a kid at heart, and I want others to think that I am a secretive hacker when they see me using the terminal.

To pursue that, I started exploring a list of cool Linux terminal tools that I can use for the job.

If I can feel like a hacker with these tools, you can too! Let's give them a try!

1. genact

Do you often feel like all you do in the terminal is run update commands, with nothing impressive to show off? Don’t worry—genact is here for you!

This little command will fill package download, network and other entries to your terminal. Those watching will think you are compiling some great programs.

You can install this from the Ubuntu Snap store or grab the prebuilt binary for genact from the official GitHub repository as per your CPU architecture.

If you downloaded the binary, open a terminal in the downloaded directory, and give the file execution permission with the following command:

chmod +x ./genact-file-name

The file name will look like genact-1.4.2-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu

Next, execute it using:

./genact-file-name

2. Cmatrix

Anyone who has seen The Matrix movie cannot forget the iconic effect of characters raining down the screen. With CMatrix, you can recreate this mesmerizing display right in your terminal.

You can install Cmatrix from the official repository of most Linux distributions. For instance, here's the command for Ubuntu-based distributions:

sudo apt install cmatrix

Now, just run it using the command:

cmatrix

For more fun, you can pair it with other fun terminal tools like lolcat, one of the fun ASCII art tools.

3. Hollywood

Hollywood is that command which will make others think that your system has been hacked my someone.

It will burst a huge text and animation effects on your terminal, where regular keyboard entries will do nothing. For a minute, I forgot I had to stop it to continue writing the article, it looked so cool! 😎

To install hollywood on Ubuntu, use the command:

sudo apt install hollywood

4. TEXTREME

Do you want a text editor that will show all types of fancy animation for character entry and deletion?

Textreme is for you.

This is not a regular text editor, where you will code swiftly, but a cool fancy text editor, that gives a festive party vibe while you write something.

You can grab an executable binary from the official website. And, extract the tar file and double-click on the file to start the editor.

5. No More Secrets

No More secrets will show an encrypt/decrypt effect for everything piped into it. It tries to recreate the famous data decryption effect seen on screen in the 1992 hacker movie Sneakers.

There are no release files for this package. So, you need to compile it from GitHub.

Make sure you have git and essential build tools like make installed. Then use the following commands to proceed:

git clone https://github.com/bartobri/no-more-secrets.git
cd ./no-more-secrets
make nms
make sneakers
sudo make install

This will install two tools, no-more-secrets or nms and sneakers.

Sneakers

Sneakers recreates the movie clip for you. Once the command completes printing encrypted characters, press any key to start the decrypting effect.

No More Secrets

Pipe any text output to this command and see the effect for yourself. If you would rather not press a key to start decryption, use:

cat agatha.txt | nms -a

This will print the contents of the file in encrypted form and then automatically start to decrypt it and show the original content.

You can experiment with it to show different colors as well!

6. Cool Retro Term

Sometimes the feeling of a hacker or a whiz comes from retro tools. This is one of the super cool terminal emulators that helps achieve what we want here.

You can install the Cool Retro Term terminal emulator application on Ubuntu using the command:

sudo apt install cool-retro-term

Next, open the terminal from your Activities Overview or app menu:

Do not forget to right-click on the terminal and explore the settings. There are more effects waiting!

7. gping

Did you ever use the Ping command to check whether you have an active internet connection? Or to check whether a site is up and running?

The ping command is just a text command, where you need to look at the values to get the picture. You can do the same, but have some aesthetically pleasing outputs (graph) using gping.

Install GPing on Ubuntu using the command:

sudo apt install gping

8. Bpytop

Bpytop is a htop alternative that prints system information neatly. You can use this command to make someone think that you're monitoring super serious aspects of your computer.

To install it, use the command:

sudo apt install bpytop

When it comes to Linux terminal tools, there are endless options from various individual developers.

Here, I have shared the ones that I tried to make myself look like a hacker to anyone who observes me when I use the computer 😄

You can also choose to explore some terminal emulators or system monitoring tools to have fun with:

Top 14 Terminal Emulators for Linux (With Extra Features or Amazing Looks)

Want a terminal that looks cool or has extra features? Here are the best Linux terminal emulators you can get.

It's FOSSAnkush Das

💬 What is your favorite on the list? Do you have some fun tools that I missed listing here? Do share your thoughts in the comments below.

We’re seeing something of a terminal emulator renaissance of late, with developers eager to reimagine, rethink, and rewire the humble console to leverage modern hardware, GPU acceleration, containerised workflows, and (in some cases) AI/LLMs. Ghostty, a new open-source and cross-platform terminal application created by Mitchell Hashimoto (co-founder of HashiCorp) is the latest to join the fray. Hashimoto’s says he “set out to build a terminal emulator that was fast, feature-rich, and had a platform-native GUI while still being cross-platform.” The first public release materialised over Christmas, rather like a festive Dickensian spook seeking to give us a glimpse into the […]

You're reading Ghostty: New Open Source Terminal That’s Spookily Good, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

Ich bin gerade in der Situation, dass ich meinen Arbeitsplatz ein wenig umgestalten möchte. Die Monitoren sollen nicht mehr nur einfach auf dem Schreibtisch stehen, sondern auf einem Gestell an den Tisch geklemmt werden — Ergo: mehr Platz auf dem Tisch. Nun gilt es dabei ein paar Dinge zu beachten. Etwa die Frage, wie schwer meine Monitore eigentlich sind. Da ich keine Lust habe alles abzubauen und die Geräte auf die Waage zu stellen, wäre es recht nett zu wissen, vor was für Geräten ich da eigentlich täglich sitze. Da Information könnte ich sicherlich aus alten Rechnungen herauskramen, doch das geht sicherlich auch ein wenig cleverer.

Das Logo des Herstellers glitzert mir auf der Frontseite des Gehäuses entgegen, doch weitere Informationen zum Gerät finden sich dort nicht. Und auch auf der Rückseite gibt es keine weiteren Details. Ein Schildchen mit der Typenbezeichnung gab es in der Regel bei den guten alten Röhrenmonitoren, doch bei meinen aktuellen Dell-Flatscreens findet sich dort nichts mehr. Auch die Monitor-Einstellungen der Gnome-Desktopumgebung lässt den Nutzer im Stich. Die zeigen nur dann Informationen zum Typ des Monitors an, wenn zwei Displays angeschlossen sind. Mehr als den Hersteller und die Bildschirmdiagonale erfährt man jedoch nicht.

Gnome geizt mit Informationen

Wenn die grafischen Tools so sparsam mit Informationen sind, dann hilft doch sicherlich das Terminal. Tools zur Anzeige von Hardware-Informationen gibt es unter Linux ja wie Sand am Meer, da müsste doch was dabei sein. Das Go-To-Werkzeug für diese Aufgabe wäre hier Inxi, das sich bei vielen Distributionen aus den Paketquellen installieren lässt (etwa via pacman -S inxi bei Arch Linux oder apt install inxi bei Ubuntu, Debian und Derivaten). Das Kommando inxi -F spuckt dann sämtliche Details zum System aus, aber auch hier Pustekuchen: keine Details zu den angeschlossenen Monitoren.

Details zum Monitor über das Terminal

Um mir eine weitere Suche unter den zahlreichen Tools zu ersparen, greife ich nun gleich auf das „richtige“ Werkzeug zurück. Details zum Displayserver liefert das Kommandozeilenwerkzeug Xrandr. Tools wie Inxi machen in der Regel nichts anderes, also solche Kommandos auszuführen und die Ausgabe optisch aufgewertet anzuzeigen. Über xrandr -q --verbose bekommt man also zahlreiche Details zu den unterstützten Auflösungen und Wiederholraten, doch der Name und Typ des Monitors fehlt immer noch. Aber nicht ganz: Die Daten sind im Feld EDID oder Extended Display Identification Data codiert.

Wer diese Daten nun jetzt nicht von Hand decodieren möchte, muss sich ein wenig unter die Arme greifen lassen. Das bei Stack Overflow gepostete Skript beispielsweise braucht keine weiteren Helferlein, um die EDID zu dekodieren. Ihr speichert folgenden Code einfach als monitor.sh ab und macht die Skriptdatei via chmod +x monitor.sh ausführbar. Aus dem Terminal heraus aufgerufen, zeigt das Skript dann die angeschlossenen Monitore inklusive den Namen des Herstellers und der Typenbezeichnung an. Technische Details zu Auflösungen oder Wiederholraten fehlen, doch die lassen sich ja auch an zahlreichen anderen Stellen ermitteln.

#!/bin/bash
while read -r output hex conn; do
    [[ -z "$conn" ]] && conn=${output%%-*}
    echo "# $output $conn   $(xxd -r -p <<< "$hex")"
done < <(xrandr --prop | awk '
    !/^[ \t]/ {
        if (output && hex) print output, hex, conn
        output=$1
        hex=""
    }
    /ConnectorType:/ {conn=$2}
    /[:.]/ && h {
        sub(/.*000000fc00/, "", hex)
        hex = substr(hex, 0, 26) "0a"
        sub(/0a.*/, "", hex)
        h=0
    }
    h {sub(/[ \t]+/, ""); hex = hex $0}
    /EDID.*:/ {h=1}
    END {if (output && hex) print output, hex, conn}
    ' | sort
)

$ ./monitor.sh 
# DP1-8 DP1   DELL U2515H
# HDMI1 HDMI1   DELL P2213

Alternativ holt ihr euch das Paket edid-decode auf den Rechner. Bei Ubuntu/Debian oder Linux Mint direkt über die offiziellen Paketquellen (via apt install edid-decode), bei Arch Linux oder Manjaro lediglich über das AUR (etwa mit einem AUR-Helper via yay -S edid-decode-git). Hier genügt dann der folgende Einzeiler, der allerdings nicht mit dem proprietären Nvidia-Treiber funktioniert. Hier bekommt ihr dann allerdings nicht nur den Hersteller und den Monitortyp angezeigt, sondern auch gleich die Seriennummer der Geräte — falls ihr an diesen Interesse haben solltet.

$ for file in $(ls -1 /sys/class/drm/*/edid); do text=$(tr -d 0 <"$file"); if [ -n "$text" ]; then edid-decode "$file" | grep -e Manufacturer: -e Product; sleep 0.0001; fi done
  Vendor & Product Identification:
    Manufacturer: DEL
    Display Product Serial Number: '9X2VY55I0J0L'
    Display Product Name: 'DELL U2515H'
  Vendor & Product Identification:
    Manufacturer: DEL
    Display Product Serial Number: 'Y57VF31AAT3M'
    Display Product Name: 'DELL P2213'

Letztendlich wäre es natürlich schneller gewesen die alten Rechnungen herauszusuchen, oder vielleicht auch mal einen Blick über den Tellerrand zu KDE zu werfen. Im Gegensatz zu den Einstellungen von Gnome zeigen die Systemeinstellungen von KDE nämlich gleich die Bildschirmkennungen mit an. Wie immer ist Gnome ein wenig arg spartanisch und geizig mit Funktionen und Details. In meinen Augen dürften die System-Settings von Gnome ruhig auch die Bezeichnungen ausgeben. Nötig sind sie in der Regel nicht, doch ab und an können sie doch auch praktisch sein.

theme.sh is a script to easily change the terminal theme. It comes with more than 400 themes, an optional interactive theme picker, and it's terminal agnostic.