axan.sh

A tree of shells. No tabs.

I don't like tabs. If you don't like tabs, maybe you will like axan.

What it is (and isn't)

axan is not a terminal emulator. Emulation is a solved problem, and the projects that solved it spent a decade getting selection, IME, accessibility, and scrollback right. axan stands on the most stable native terminal each OS already has and builds exactly one new thing: the tree.

This is a personal project that I'm sharing because everything I could find in this shape was unsatisfying — built on Electron, or busy chasing features I didn't care about: GPU rendering benchmarks, multiplexer keybinding schemes, theme ecosystems. I wanted my shells in a tree, native on each platform, and boring everywhere else.

Why the old, boring codebases

On Linux, axan is a fork of gnome-terminal 3.52 on GTK3. Not GTK4, not ptyxis — deliberately the oldest and most stable codebase I could fork from.

On Windows there is no embeddable native terminal widget at all, so axan forks the whole of Windows Terminal at a pinned stable release — same reasoning, same posture. Both forks are frozen: security fixes get cherry-picked, upstream feature churn gets ignored. What need have I for new features? You know, the Clock on Windows downloaded an update the other day, what the hell was that about?

What's the name about?

With all the evil corporations naming themselves and their products after Lord of the Rings, I figured I'd name my stupid little terminal after an obscure Quenya word before a fascist billionaire uses it.

Get it

Windows — a signed sideload package from the latest release. Installs side by side with stock Windows Terminal; touches nothing of yours.

Linux — build from source with meson; the README has validated per-distro instructions.

macOS — not planned. I have an Intel Mac so I can't use Ghostty or I'd consider it.