Hello fellow reader, it has been a while since I posted here and I’m really ashamed of that. I just want to make sure that I didn’t lose the ability to write and reassure everyone that I didn’t abandon any of my open-source activities. On the contrary I’m working harder than ever.

In the last few weeks I’ve been the main developer of the new ubuntu-terminal-app (https://launchpad.net/ubuntu-terminal-app/reboot), which is a complete rewrite of the terminal application for the ubuntu platform.

All this started from the foundations, with a shiny new port of QTermWidget (originally Konsole) to QML (https://github.com/Swordfish90/qmltermwidget). This aims to an independent QML terminal widget, so if you want to create your own terminal emulator and you need a terminal engine give it a go, it’s quite good (you know you should never ask a barber if you need a haircut). Compared to the previous version this it has more features, it’s more reliable and is closer to upstream so we can effectively work with them for the benefit of everyone.

But a new engine wasn’t enough, so I started a rewrite of the application that yesterday saw the light of day and was released on the click store as Terminal Reboot. As you can see it features a new look and feel, tabs support with previews, configurable bottom keyboard bar (in the short future customizable via JSON files) and more. Everything is thought to to maximize the screen estate and to be as fast as possible on touch devices (but don’t worry desktop users we are also thinking about you).

Please keep in mind that this is still a preview and some issues are expected but if you have some spare time or you want to try something new just install it and report issues, ideas, mockups or why not, even patches. We will be happy to take a look at them!

But, but, but what happened to cool-retro-term? No worries, CRT is not going anywhere. I already ported it to the new QMLTermWidget and in the next days I’m going to start a new refactoring and cleanup campaign on it.

What?!… No, don’t be alarmed; cool-old-term has just changed name in cool-retro-term.

But why?… Well, cool-old-term was a sort of boilerplate name I chose at the beginning of the project and it stuck when the project became more popular. cool-retro-term keeps familiarity and has a very cool acronym so we can talk nerdy: “Have you tried CRT. It’s really great!”.

Why didn’t you do that before?… Because I was planning to change the way the program is built and I didn’t want to break the packages twice. Now all packages can be updated only once and I promise I won’t break them again anytime soon.

What else did you change?… Well in the last month many things have. New features such as mouse support, color support, improved/fixed key combinations have landed in master together with many bugfixes. Moreover we are working on a OSX port which will see major improvements in the short future.

Why are you interviewing yourself?… I actually don’t know, but I’m going to take advantage of this question to thank all the people who contributed to the project. Some of you helped with the code, some with the packaging/docs, some donated money and some just spread the world.

You have all been amazing! Thank you very much!

https://github.com/Swordfish90/cool-retro-term.

Since when I played Fallout III for the first time I have always wanted my terminal to look like those old jittery CRT screens that you loved in the game. Sadly there was nothing like that on Linux… Till I decided to make one myself!

In the last six months I dedicated some of my spare time to create a terminal emulator which had to look that way, but also had to be customizable and reasonably lightweight. Now the project is near completion I want to share with everyone the result!

Well here we are… I always felt the need to find a place to share some thoughts, so I’m starting my shiny new blog.

I’m Filippo Scognamiglio and I’m currently a Computer Engineering student at “Università di Pavia”, so you should expect basically nerdy stuff on this page (although I reserve the right to rant about anything).

I dislike long introductions so stay tuned for some real content…