st

Active

st.suckless.org

Country: United States (US)
Founded: 2012
Developer: suckless.org
Pricing: Free (open-source)
Open source: Yes
Platforms: Linux

Indexes

Terminal Emulators

Overview

st is a simple terminal emulator for X11/Xorg developed by the suckless.org project. It is designed as a lightweight replacement for xterm and urxvt, prioritizing minimalism and efficiency over feature bloat. The project emphasizes writing clean, maintainable code and avoiding unnecessary complexity, making it suitable for users who prefer bare-bones terminal functionality and want to understand or customize their tools.

Key Features

Lightweight Implementation - Minimal codebase designed to be simple and easy to understand and modify
256 Color Support - Supports 256 colors and true color (24-bit) output for modern terminal applications
VT10X Escape Sequences - Emulates most VT10X escape sequences for compatibility with legacy and modern applications
UTF-8 Support - Full UTF-8 character encoding support for international text and emoji
X11 Copy/Paste - Native X11 clipboard integration for seamless copy and paste operations
Anti-aliased Fonts - Renders fonts with anti-aliasing and supports font fallback for missing glyphs
Dynamic Resizing - Supports window resizing with proper terminal reflow
Customizable Shortcuts - Keyboard shortcuts can be configured through source code modification
Line Drawing Support - Supports line drawing characters for terminal-based graphics

Pricing

Plan	Price	Includes
Free	$0	Full source code, all features, unlimited use

Platforms & Requirements

st runs on Linux systems with X11/Xorg. It requires libX11, libXft, and a C compiler for building from source. The application is limited to X11-based systems and does not support Wayland, macOS, or Windows natively, though it may be compiled on BSD systems.

Integrations & Ecosystem

tmux (synchronized rendering support)
X11 clipboard
fontconfig (font selection)
Git (for version control of custom builds)

Alternatives

App	Difference
xterm	Older, more feature-rich terminal emulator with broader compatibility but significantly larger codebase
urxvt (rxvt-unicode)	Lightweight alternative with Unicode support and Perl scripting, but more complex than st
kitty	Modern GPU-accelerated terminal with advanced features like image support, but heavier resource usage
alacritty	GPU-accelerated terminal written in Rust with focus on performance, but requires more dependencies

Reputation

st is respected within the minimalist and Unix philosophy communities for its commitment to simplicity and code clarity. Users appreciate its lightweight footprint and ease of customization through source code modification. However, it has limited appeal to mainstream users due to its X11-only support, lack of Wayland compatibility, and requirement to compile from source. The project's philosophy of 'software that sucks less' resonates with developers who value understanding their tools but may alienate those seeking out-of-the-box functionality.

Sources (10)