# Swordfish90/cool-retro-term

A good looking terminal emulator which mimics the old cathode display...

Repository: https://github.com/Swordfish90/cool-retro-term
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/cool-retro-term
Language: QML
License Family: other
Topics: retro, qml, qt, macos, linux, terminal
Last push: 2026-05-31T10:12:54+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 80/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-02T17:46:02.011165+00:00)
- activity 85, release rhythm 62, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 4667, "days_push": 94, "days_rel": 94, "gap_med": 128, "n_releases_24m": 2}
- flags: no_license
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 25957, forks 1003 (observed 2026-08-28T04:11:38.775512+00:00)

## What it is
cool-retro-term is a terminal emulator that mimics the look and feel of old cathode ray tube (CRT) screens, built with Qt6 and QML. It is designed to be eye-candy, customizable, and reasonably lightweight, with configurable colors, fonts, and effects.

## Use cases
- retro CRT-style terminal emulator
- terminal that looks like an old cathode tube monitor
- customizable terminal with amber and green phosphor themes
- nostalgic DOS-style terminal for Linux and macOS
- eye-candy terminal emulator with scanline and glow effects
- lightweight alternative terminal emulator

## When to choose
- you want a visually distinctive retro terminal for daily use on Linux or macOS
- you enjoy customizing colors, fonts, and CRT effects via a context menu
- you want a lightweight terminal with strong aesthetic appeal

## When to avoid
- you need a terminal with advanced features like splits, tabs, or GPU-accelerated rendering for heavy workloads
- you need Windows support
- you prefer a minimal, distraction-free terminal without visual effects
- you need a terminal under active commercial support or with a clearly defined license

## Facets
- artifact type: application
- maturity: active
- function: terminal-ui, gui
- domain: developer-tools, desktop-applications
- platform: cpp
- tags: terminal-emulator, retro, crt-effects, qt, qml, eye-candy, command-line, linux, macos, desktop

## Member repositories
- Swordfish90/cool-retro-term (main) score 80

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:11:38.775512+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-29T16:55:57.059779+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/Swordfish90/cool-retro-term (fetched 2026-08-28T04:11:38.775512+00:00, sha 0a155d07beb9)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.