LimpetUTF-8 and fonts
Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, CJK, combining characters and monochrome emoji. DejaVu Sans Mono Nerd Font is included, with fallbacks for other scripts. Right-to-left layout is not supported.
For the AROS Shell
A modern terminal
for AROS.
Limpet runs the native AROS Shell in a window with UTF-8 text, 24-bit colour, scrollback, search, copy and paste, clickable links and inline images. Your commands, scripts and assigns stay as they are.
Open source (MIT) · PC & Raspberry Pi · Version 0.10.1
Why Limpet
The goal is
to replace CON:.
I wanted a modern terminal on AROS, so I started building Limpet.
The AROS console, CON:, shows Latin-1 text in a handful of pens. Tools written in the last twenty years expect more: UTF-8, 256 and 24-bit colours, links, a screen they can redraw. Without that, ports of current command-line programs either look broken or need a special AROS mode.
Limpet is meant to become the console you use every day. That means two things at once: existing AROS software keeps working as it does in CON:, and current command-line tools, full-screen programs and remote sessions over SSH work as they do elsewhere.
Today Limpet runs beside the system console. The Shell inside it is the ordinary AROS Shell; Limpet is the window, the text renderer, the keyboard and the history. The experimental handler can already stand in for CON:.
The comparison on the right uses one test program that sends the same bytes to both consoles without asking first. It covers these sequences on the named system and is not a complete compatibility table.
| Bytes sent | CON: | Limpet |
|---|---|---|
| UTF-8 text: Polish letters, CJK, an emoji | shown as Latin-1 characters | shown correctly |
ESC[31m | pen 1 | pen 1, as in CON: |
256 colours, ESC[38;5;196m | ignored | bright red |
24-bit colour, ESC[38;2;255;128;0m | ignored | orange |
| OSC 8 link | sequence printed as text | label shown as a link |
| Capability query (DOS packet) | ERROR_ACTION_NOT_KNOWN | colour level, pens, size |
CON:.
Shell features
What you get
in the Shell.
Everything below works with the standard AROS Shell and its commands. Nothing needs to be installed besides Limpet.
Colour
16, 256 and 24-bit colour. Native Shell output keeps its Workbench pens, so the prompt and List look the way AROS programs intend.
Scrollback and resize
Scroll with the wheel or Shift+PgUp. When you resize the window, the text on screen and in the history is wrapped again to the new width.
Search
RAmiga+F finds text in the output, including what has scrolled away. Ctrl+R searches the commands you typed earlier.
Copy and paste
Select with the mouse, copy with RAmiga+C, paste with RAmiga+V, through the system clipboard. A selection stays in place while other lines change.
Links
Ctrl+click opens a web address through OpenURL, or a local file with its default tool. Ctrl+Shift+click copies the address. Nothing opens by itself.
Completion and file drop
Tab completes paths and commands. Drag icons from Workbench onto the window and their quoted paths appear on the command line.
Break keys
Ctrl+C breaks the running command; Ctrl+D/E/F send their signals as in CON:; Ctrl+\ ends input.
Full-screen programs
Alternate screen, bracketed paste, resize and mouse-wheel reports, and synchronized updates for programs that draw the whole window, such as editors.
Keys, options and limits are listed in the capability reference.
Programs
Programs that
run in Limpet.
Native AROS ports that use what the terminal offers. Each is a separate download; in CON: or in a file they print plain text.
eza
A replacement for List and Dir with colours, file-type icons, a tree view and Git status read straight from the repository. Permissions are the native AmigaDOS hsparwed bits.
apkg install eza eza -l --icons --git --header eza --icons -T src themes
eza asks Limpet whether it can draw the icons and leaves them out if not. They are shown with the bundled font at its default size. Available for ABIv11 distributions and for mainline AROS on PC and the Raspberry Pi. eza for AROS ↗
Helix
A modal text editor with syntax highlighting, multiple cursors, splits and language-server support. It needs a terminal that can redraw the screen, so it runs in Limpet and not in CON:.
hx main.rs
Available for ABIv11 distributions, where it includes a language server for WebAssembly text files, and for mainline AROS on PC and the Raspberry Pi as the editor alone. Helix for AROS ↗
CON: it prints the same information as plain text.Fastfetch and apkg
Fastfetch shows the system summary at the top of this page. Limpet can run it whenever a new Shell window opens: choose it in Project > Preferences, on the Shell page.
apkg install fastfetch fastfetch -c aros-logo
apkg, the AROS package manager, uses Limpet for coloured results, tables that fit the window and a download bar that stays on one line.
Themes & Preferences
Use the colour
schemes you know.
Fifteen themes come with Limpet. Colour files made for Ghostty, Kitty and iTerm2 work as they are.
Download a scheme, put the file into the themes drawer (Preferences has a button that opens it) and pick it from the list. The window behind Preferences shows the choice at once. Use keeps it until the next restart, Save for good, Cancel goes back.
Included: Dracula, Nord, Tokyo Night, Gruvbox Dark, One Dark, Rosé Pine, Catppuccin Mocha and Latte, Solarized Dark and Light, Limpet's own dark, light and high-contrast themes, and two Amiga palettes: MagicWB and Workbench 3.1.
A theme sets the default text and background, the 16 palette colours, the cursor and the selection. Colours a program chooses itself, such as an editor's own scheme, are not changed.
The same eza listing in four of the included themes.
Images
Images in
the terminal.
Programs can draw pictures between lines of text, using a subset of the Kitty graphics protocol.
Pictures are sent as raw RGB or RGBA pixels. PNG data and scaling by the terminal are not supported; see the supported subset.
CON: replacement · experimental
Limpet as the
system console.
A separate download adds LIMPET:, a DOS console handler. One command lets it answer for CON: until the next restart.
- Install the handler. Unpack the experimental archive into the Limpet drawer and run
Install-Handler. It mountsLIMPET:until the next reboot and writes nothing to the system's start-up files. - Ask for a Limpet window by name.
NewShell WINDOW LIMPET:, or any program that opensLIMPET:0/0/640/200/Title.CON:is untouched. - Or let it stand in for CON:.
LimpetCON ONmakes newCON:windows Limpet windows: NewShell, Execute Command, programs that open their own console.LimpetCON OFFor a restart gives the system console back.
The handler reads window names the way CON: does (position, size, title, CLOSE, WAIT, AUTO, SCREEN) and supports the things console programs rely on: line and raw mode, WaitForChar(), break signals, and the Amiga cursor and window reports.
Why it is still experimental: a Limpet console window uses about 19 MiB of memory on mainline AROS and about 30 MiB on ABIv11 distributions, while the system console on mainline uses under 1 MiB. With empty size fields it opens an 80×24 window where CON: opens a strip across the screen. Programs started from Workbench icons have not been checked widely. The handler page lists what matches CON: and what does not.
NewShell after LimpetCON ON, AROS One, Limpet 0.10.0.
SSH
Work on
other computers.
Limpet comes with an SSH client. Open a shell on a server, a Mac or a Linux machine and use it in the same window, with the same colours, fonts and keys.
ssh user@host ssh user@host "uname -a" ssh -p 2222 -i Work:keys/server user@host
The first line opens a remote shell: the remote program's colours, full-screen programs such as Vim, and the window size follow along. The second runs one command and returns its return code to the AROS Shell.
Log in with a key, a password or the server's own questions. The first time you contact a server, Limpet shows the fingerprint of its key and asks; a server whose key has changed is refused.
- Your OpenSSH files work. Keys,
known_hostsandconfiglive inENVARC:SSHin the formats of OpenSSH. Copy a key from another computer and connect. - On all three systems. ABIv11 distributions, mainline AROS on PCs and on the Raspberry Pi;
sshis in the Limpet drawer. - Current cryptography. libssh with Mbed TLS from the aros-crypto kit; Ed25519 keys, ChaCha20-Poly1305 and AES.
- Not there yet. File transfer, port forwarding, key generation and IPv6. The SSH guide has the details.
What is next
Where Limpet
is going.
The order of work follows the goal: first a console good enough to replace CON:, then the things a modern terminal is used for.
- CON: for daily use. Less memory per console window,
CON:'s default window placement, a round of Workbench programs, and an optional line forS:User-Startup. - More SSH. File transfer, key generation and an agent.
- Unix terminal programs. Most of them expect a pseudo-terminal and termios, which AROS does not provide yet. A runtime for that works in experiments on mainline; it is not distributed, so such programs do not run unchanged today.
- Panes and a multiplexer. Horizontal and vertical splits with separate sessions.
- Completion and shortcuts. Better completion for commands and their arguments, configurable keys and prompt.
- Raspberry Pi hardware. The Pi build still has to be run on a real board.
The full list, with links to the interfaces proposed for AROS itself, is in the roadmap.
For programmers
Colour in Limpet,
plain text in CON:.
A program can ask the console what it supports before it prints anything.
The question is a DOS packet on the output handle. It does not read from the keyboard and does not change terminal modes, so it is safe in scripts and with redirected output. Limpet answers with its colour level, pens, size and input modes; CON: and files answer that they do not know the packet, and the program prints plain text.
The SDK is a small C library with helpers for colours, progress lines, links, window titles and images. Programs that only write text and read lines need none of it: Limpet decodes their UTF-8 output as it is.
C · ASK FIRST, THEN PRINT
LimpetPresentation p;
char red[LIMPET_SEQUENCE_MAX];
fflush(stdout);
if (limpet_query_presentation(Output(), &p, NULL)
== LIMPET_OK &&
limpet_sgr_ansi(red, sizeof red, &p, 1, 0))
printf("%serror:%s file not found\n",
red, LIMPET_SGR_FG_DEFAULT);
else
printf("error: file not found\n");PC / Raspberry Pi
Download Limpet 0.11.0.
Archives for ABIv11 distributions such as AROS One, for mainline AROS on PC, and a test build for AROS on the Raspberry Pi.
PC / x86_64AROS One / ABIv11ABIv11 · ZIP archive ↓PC / x86_64Mainline AROSABIv1 · ZIP archive ↓Raspberry Pi / AArch64 · test buildAROS for Raspberry PiABIv1 · ZIP archive ↓
Install with apkg
apkg update apkg install limpet
The same command works on all three systems. About the package manager ↗
Or from an archive
Copy the Limpet drawer and its icon into SYS:Utilities, then double-click Limpet. The included README lists keys, options and known limitations. The experimental LIMPET: handler is a separate archive in the same release.