3 ms·

Zellij 0.45.0: nested sessions, Kitty graphics, a fresh UI

55 points by peterhajas 1mo ago

ilioscio 1mo ago
Switched to Zellij a few years back mostly for the sane defaults, I expected to come crawling back to tmux, but it's actually stuck quite nicely and has become a staple in my workflow. It hasn't been a perfect experience, but I like it a lot and I'm happy to see a new feature-rich release like this.
_bobm 1mo ago
What is the purpose of the "zellij" in the top left corner and why isn't there an option to remove it?
- raindown 1mo ago
  Project outreach, to keep spreading the word through screenshots etc. This is a free projects with no marketing, to the logo is a sort of branding.
- tveyben 1mo ago
  It’s the (very small) price you pay for a great and free product (I think it’s great!!!). If you don’t like that ‘feature’ you’re not forced to use it ;-)
- Magicrafter13 1mo ago
  you mean the tab bar...? Gee, I wonder why that's there. Also there is an option, modify the libre source code that is provided to you.
sph 1mo ago
Being cheeky here, but how many terminal emulators and multiplexers do we need? What is driving the Cambrian explosion of CLI tools in the last ~5 years? I’ve been using Linux since 2001 and use standard Konsole on zsh. I have a graphical desktop environment to deal with windows and showing pictures alongside them. Is it perhaps because I am an Emacs person that all I need exist within its loving embrace?
- orbital-decay 1mo ago
  TUI got back into fashion and it seems like everyone is trying hard to reinvent GUI in a really roundabout way, like hacking Braille to display graphs. I think the circle will be complete with the support for proportional fonts for readability, like in Emacs. Character sizing is already (kind of) a thing, which ridiculously enables Markdown rendering in a terminal. Man, I really want a proper GUI framework with this kind of energy behind it.
  - sph 1mo ago
    A look at the VT100 standard was enough for me to decide building "modern" GUIs on top of that is truly the definition of madness and bloat. Why go through all that effort and leaky abstractions to display GUIs when you can just bitblt pixels from memory to a framebuffer directly?
    - iamnothere 1mo ago
      Aesthetics, running TUI tools headless over SSH, zero possibility of Electron (although I’ve seen TUI tools written in node which is almost as bad), no worries about X/Wayland jankiness. Frameworks like bubbletea make it very easy these days. I think there’s a limit though, a good TUI shouldn’t be “modern”, it should be like the old TUIs that ran auto shops and accounting systems. TUIs that are information dense, keyboard-driven, and snappy are hard to beat.
      - sph 1mo ago
        I figure we can do more "information dense" than 80x25 Unicode characters, or marginally more than that, these days.
        iamnothere 1mo ago
        Set a smaller font on your terminal emulator, done. Good TUI apps are responsive and resize to fill larger spaces.
      - 1mo ago
Spartan-S63 1mo ago
I'm curious for folks who use multiplexers: I've tried tmux and Zellij and if I used a multiplexer, it would be Zellij. However, I can't stand losing terminal real estate, but I don't know why that is. How do you deal with the loss of real estate from a multiplexer? I use Ghostty, so new tabs and splits don't feel that strange to me. I'm guessing the feature I'm missing out on is session resumption and presets? If I leaned into that more, then a multiplexer would be worth the potential drawbacks?
- orbital-decay 1mo ago
  There are separate session persistence daemons you can use instead of a full-fledged multiplexer - dtach, abduco, shpool, zmx, etc.
- roarcher 1mo ago
  Zellij has a ton of chrome by default to make it discoverable for new users, but you can configure it so it only takes up one line at the bottom of your screen, like tmux. I like to also hit F11 to go fullscreen, which gets me a few more lines. It also supports "layouts" which are similar to `tmuxinator` scripts. You can set up a bunch of tabs and split panes and run commands in each to start up your text editor, agent, git client, etc. The ability to instantly spin up my entire dev environment with everything just where I like it, configurable on a per-project basis, is what keeps me in the console instead of using desktop apps.
- johntash 1mo ago
  what do you mean by losing terminal real estate? If you mean the navbar/where it shows the tabs/windows/whatever, doesn't ghostty also have a tab bar? With screen/tmux (and I assume zellij), you can hide the tab bar completely if you want.
brcmthrowaway 1mo ago
Is there a cheat sheet from tmux to zellij?
- raindown 1mo ago
  Zellij has a tmux mode, so you can press ctrl+b and it will have the tmux keybindings. You can also modify the prefix if you need.
crossroadsguy 1mo ago
Zellij feels like what Jekyll is/was for blogging, at one point, at least the way people were suddenly pursuing it. Not necessarily a bad thing, though.
blakeashleyjr 1mo ago
Zellij is a breath of fresh air in the terminal and my daily driver for years. Thanks to the team for all their hard work?
i_am_a_peasant 1mo ago
I always had the feeling that Zellij is there for people who want to use tmux but don't want to take the 2 minutes it takes to learn the 3-4 basic key combinations you need to make it useful...

55 points by peterhajas 1mo ago

Switched to Zellij a few years back mostly for the sane defaults, I expected to come crawling back to tmux, but it's actually stuck quite nicely and has become a staple in my workflow. It hasn't been a perfect experience, but I like it a lot and I'm happy to see a new feature-rich release like this.

_bobm 1mo ago

What is the purpose of the "zellij" in the top left corner and why isn't there an option to remove it?

raindown 1mo ago
Project outreach, to keep spreading the word through screenshots etc. This is a free projects with no marketing, to the logo is a sort of branding.
tveyben 1mo ago
It’s the (very small) price you pay for a great and free product (I think it’s great!!!). If you don’t like that ‘feature’ you’re not forced to use it ;-)
Magicrafter13 1mo ago
you mean the tab bar...? Gee, I wonder why that's there. Also there is an option, modify the libre source code that is provided to you.

sph 1mo ago

Being cheeky here, but how many terminal emulators and multiplexers do we need? What is driving the Cambrian explosion of CLI tools in the last ~5 years? I’ve been using Linux since 2001 and use standard Konsole on zsh. I have a graphical desktop environment to deal with windows and showing pictures alongside them. Is it perhaps because I am an Emacs person that all I need exist within its loving embrace?

orbital-decay 1mo ago
TUI got back into fashion and it seems like everyone is trying hard to reinvent GUI in a really roundabout way, like hacking Braille to display graphs. I think the circle will be complete with the support for proportional fonts for readability, like in Emacs. Character sizing is already (kind of) a thing, which ridiculously enables Markdown rendering in a terminal. Man, I really want a proper GUI framework with this kind of energy behind it.
- sph 1mo ago
  A look at the VT100 standard was enough for me to decide building "modern" GUIs on top of that is truly the definition of madness and bloat. Why go through all that effort and leaky abstractions to display GUIs when you can just bitblt pixels from memory to a framebuffer directly?
  - iamnothere 1mo ago
    Aesthetics, running TUI tools headless over SSH, zero possibility of Electron (although I’ve seen TUI tools written in node which is almost as bad), no worries about X/Wayland jankiness. Frameworks like bubbletea make it very easy these days. I think there’s a limit though, a good TUI shouldn’t be “modern”, it should be like the old TUIs that ran auto shops and accounting systems. TUIs that are information dense, keyboard-driven, and snappy are hard to beat.
    - sph 1mo ago
      I figure we can do more "information dense" than 80x25 Unicode characters, or marginally more than that, these days.
      - iamnothere 1mo ago
        Set a smaller font on your terminal emulator, done. Good TUI apps are responsive and resize to fill larger spaces.
    - 1mo ago

Spartan-S63 1mo ago

I'm curious for folks who use multiplexers: I've tried tmux and Zellij and if I used a multiplexer, it would be Zellij. However, I can't stand losing terminal real estate, but I don't know why that is. How do you deal with the loss of real estate from a multiplexer? I use Ghostty, so new tabs and splits don't feel that strange to me. I'm guessing the feature I'm missing out on is session resumption and presets? If I leaned into that more, then a multiplexer would be worth the potential drawbacks?

orbital-decay 1mo ago
There are separate session persistence daemons you can use instead of a full-fledged multiplexer - dtach, abduco, shpool, zmx, etc.
roarcher 1mo ago
Zellij has a ton of chrome by default to make it discoverable for new users, but you can configure it so it only takes up one line at the bottom of your screen, like tmux. I like to also hit F11 to go fullscreen, which gets me a few more lines. It also supports "layouts" which are similar to `tmuxinator` scripts. You can set up a bunch of tabs and split panes and run commands in each to start up your text editor, agent, git client, etc. The ability to instantly spin up my entire dev environment with everything just where I like it, configurable on a per-project basis, is what keeps me in the console instead of using desktop apps.
johntash 1mo ago
what do you mean by losing terminal real estate? If you mean the navbar/where it shows the tabs/windows/whatever, doesn't ghostty also have a tab bar? With screen/tmux (and I assume zellij), you can hide the tab bar completely if you want.

brcmthrowaway 1mo ago

Is there a cheat sheet from tmux to zellij?

raindown 1mo ago
Zellij has a tmux mode, so you can press ctrl+b and it will have the tmux keybindings. You can also modify the prefix if you need.

crossroadsguy 1mo ago

Zellij feels like what Jekyll is/was for blogging, at one point, at least the way people were suddenly pursuing it. Not necessarily a bad thing, though.

blakeashleyjr 1mo ago

Zellij is a breath of fresh air in the terminal and my daily driver for years. Thanks to the team for all their hard work?

i_am_a_peasant 1mo ago

I always had the feeling that Zellij is there for people who want to use tmux but don't want to take the 2 minutes it takes to learn the 3-4 basic key combinations you need to make it useful...