// ITS FOSS — LINUX & OPEN SOURCE
Ghostty 1.4 Is Faster and Uses Less RAM, but Drops Ubuntu 24.04 LTS Support
Ghostty is a terminal emulator from HashiCorp co-founder Mitchell Hashimoto that implements GPU acceleration while maintaining a native look on each supported platform.
On Linux, the app uses GTK, whereas on macOS, the app uses Swift.
The project claims it has millions of daily users, and many other terminal emulators have already adopted libghostty-vt, the C-based virtual terminal emulator library it offers.
The latest release, v1.4, is a major one with over 170 contributors and 2,800+ commits behind it. We will mostly focus on what Linux users get with a few changes from other platforms to get you up to speed.
The reason why Ubuntu 24.04 LTS can't run native builds is that Ghostty 1.4 requires GTK 4.18 and libadwaita 1.7, causing an exit at startup if older libraries are loaded. The developers say that users can opt for an older build to get Ghostty running on their systems.
Anyhow, coming back to the release, the GTK app gets sharp text at fractional scaling, such as 125% or 150%, after it appeared blurry due to some upstream changes, and the rebuilt, triple-buffered renderer is expected to cut tearing.
Then you have the drag and drop ability for split windows, which macOS has had since 1.3, where a split can be dropped onto any other one, even in a different tab or window, with its running processes and working directory moving along with it.
Global keybinds on Wayland now use the vicinae-hotkey-v1 protocol on compositors like Hyprland 0.56 and newer and go through the desktop portal on the rest. This should improve hotkey behavior across different Wayland compositors.
Background blur now works on Niri, and a new +toggle-quick-terminal command helps window managers that can't register global shortcuts.
A few keyboard shortcuts have also been reworked in the GTK app: