opalterm

Bare-metal DRM terminal emulator written in pure C. Renders directly to the Linux framebuffer using KMS/DRM, with FreeType font rasterization and libvterm terminal emulation. No X11, no Wayland, no compositor.

Features

• Direct DRM/KMS framebuffer rendering (no display server)
• FreeType glyph rasterization with Nerd Font support
• Shadow-buffered two-pass rendering (flicker-free)
• Tabbed sessions (up to 8 tabs)
• Vertical split panes (50/50)
• Unix socket IPC for tab/pane control
• Cooperative VT switching (Ctrl+Alt+Fn)
• Strict raw mode (Ctrl+C/Z pass to shell)
• Nord color scheme

Dependencies

• libdrm
• freetype2
• libvterm
• libutil (glibc)
• A monospace TTF font (auto-detected at runtime)

Arch Linux

sudo pacman -S libdrm freetype2 libvterm ttf-jetbrains-mono-nerd

Debian/Ubuntu

sudo apt install libdrm-dev libfreetype-dev libvterm-dev fonts-jetbrains-mono

Any of these fonts will be detected automatically: JetBrains Mono, Fira Code, DejaVu Sans Mono, Liberation Mono.

Build

make

Install

sudo make install            # installs to /usr/local/bin
sudo make install PREFIX=/usr # or /usr/bin for AUR/packages

To uninstall:

sudo make uninstall

Usage

Must run from a Linux TTY (not a terminal emulator). Requires root for DRM access.

sudo ./opalterm

The first instance starts the server. Subsequent invocations send IPC commands:

./opalterm --new-tab       # Open a new tab
./opalterm --next          # Switch to next tab
./opalterm --prev          # Switch to previous tab
./opalterm --split-v       # Split active tab vertically
./opalterm --left          # Focus left pane
./opalterm --right         # Focus right pane
./opalterm --help          # Show help

Short flags: -nt, -n, -p, -s, -l, -r, -h.

Configuration

Edit the AppConfig struct in opalterm.c:

• font_size -- pixel size (default: 20)
• Colors use 0x00RRGGBB format (Nord palette by default)

Fonts are auto-detected from a built-in fallback list. To change the priority order, edit the font_fallbacks[] array in opalterm.c.

Files

File	Purpose
opalterm.c	Main terminal emulator
Makefile	Build configuration

Logs

Runtime logs are written to /tmp/opalterm.log. IPC socket is per-user at /tmp/opalterm_<uid>.sock.

License

See repository for license information.