JEjesprenj·Sep 23, 2025Submission
X server implementation for SIXEL-featured terminals (2010-2014)
63 points · Open discussionsaitoha
xserver-SIXEL
C2019–2025
saitoha / xserver-SIXEL
xserver-SIXEL
A X server implementation for SIXEL-featured terminals, based on @pelya's Xsdl kdrive server(https://github.com/pelya/xserver-xsdl)
5Distinct people
7Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
111GitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
A X server implementation for SIXEL-featured terminals, based on @pelya's Xsdl kdrive server(https://github.com/pelya/xserver-xsdl)
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use has been verified yet.
What people are saying
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Also in these discussions
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This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:03:16 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year7 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2019-03-29 16:19:42 UTC to 2025-09-23 01:07:57 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 1 | 1 |
What Hacker News says
7 sourcesIt already exists for Sixel: https://github.com/saitoha/xserver-sixel
...but at that point X forwarding or VNC seems more useful.
In Forking Chrome to render in a terminal (2023)If you really want crazy, run `xterm -ti 340`, then run run an X server from the xserver-sixel repository <https://github.com/saitoha/xserver-SIXEL> in it. Now y ou can run as many terminal emulators, complete with real truetype fonts and all the colors you could want, inside the one terminal. Use a tiling window manager and you’ll be able to avoid using tmux entirely.
In "[31M"? ANSI Terminal security in 2023 and finding 10 CVEsThere's a X with sixel support: https://github.com/saitoha/xserver-sixel
I played with this before, and I could use X11 within a mlterm terminal.
I should try to recompile it with cosmopolitan to have a single X server binary both for Windows and Linux
In Blink virtual machine now supports running GUI programsWhat you do is run `xterm -ti vt340`. If your xterm was compiled with SIXEL support, this will enable it. (You can test it by running something simple like `gnuplot -e "set terminal sixelgd; set key bmargin center horizontal; plot [-5pi:5pi] [-5:5] real(tan(x)/atan(x)), 1/x"`.)
Now run Xsixel (from <https://github.com/saitoha/xserver-sixel>) to run an X server that outputs to sixel graphics. In that X server you can run any program you would like, and its graphical output will be converted to sixels, printed to stdout, given to xterm, and then xterm will draw them.
Job done!
See <https://saitoha.github.io/libsixel/> for more information and tools, along with lots of screenshots.
In If one GUI's not enough for your SPARC workstation, try four> unfortunately it's way too slow to get anywhere near 'realtime' output (30fps or better).
That's not due to sixels. Check out the sixel nyan cat: https://github.com/hackerb9/sixvid
Look at the FPS indicator in the bottom. It was pointed to me in https://github.com/microsoft/Terminal/issues/448#issuecommen...
The issue may be in your code.
I think I have similar performance issues, as the glyph selection process could be more optimized.
Derasterized is mostly Jart work (who is best known here for her work on Cosmopolitan), we were mostly interested in quality.
Reducing the set of glyph to something that could benefit from optimizations could help.
> I really wish there was a decent pixel-framebuffer standard for terminals (with at least the same performance as ncurses)
Sixel performance is quite decent: personally, I can play videos in m
Read the rest
y terminal.
Try MPV on mintty: https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/issues/2183
I have also played with a X server rendering over sixel, no performance issue: https://github.com/saitoha/xserver-SIXEL
When sixel support is added to Windows Terminal, I may update it, because it would be fun to have one tab to run stuff!
https://github.com/saitoha/xserver-SIXEL
I haven't tried that but issues tell that even mouse works with Firefox in terminal.
In Show HN: GNUplot with sixel – Mix images, ANSI colors and plots