Linux developers have a new toy to play with: “Warp.” Warp is a (currently) closed-source terminal emulator built using the Rust programming language.
It offers hardware acceleration, integrated AI, collaborative capabilities, and uses a “block” based approach to group commands and output that help set it apart from traditional console-based tools.
Plus, when it comes to text input Warp functions more like an IDE or text editor by offering filtering and selections, cursor positioning (including multiple cursors), auto-completion, syntax highlighting, and more.
Previously a Mac-only app, Warp is now available for Linux distributions, including Ubuntu.
At launch, Warp’s Linux app already offers the same features of the Mac version (it shares 98% of the underlying code) plus slightly better performance thanks to additional optimisations specific to the Linux build (but coming to Mac in a future update).
Warp is not an Electron app (phew). It’s built using open-source Rust libraries (including, notably, System76’s cosmic-text), and bug fixes and other tweaks are upstreamed. It also makes use of its own Rust-based UI framework which the company plans to open source.
As Warp supports zsh, bash and fish so it should work “out of the box” with most existing shell setups — though chances are someone with a niche complex exception will “actually…” that claim!
