Hunt for the perfect file-manager(Yazi): which turned into a terminal crisis…Ultimately leading to “Guess what, Ghostty is my daily driver now.” 😂

On the plus side, it gave a clean excuse to tidy up the whole “which terminal am I actually using?” mess from the previous terminal‑selection adventure and lock in a setup that finally feels intentional instead of accidental.

Quick throwback to the terminal saga

In the previous terminal‑selection episode, the whole point was to step away from the default GNOME terminal and seriously test modern options like Ghostty, Ptyxis and friends. That journey left a half‑configured landscape of terminals, desktop files, and GNOME settings that “mostly worked,” but nothing felt completely settled as the one true default.

Yazi became the perfect stress test for that previous choice, because a terminal file manager with previews will absolutely expose any jank in your terminal setup. If the terminal is slow, misconfigured, or doesn’t integrate nicely with GNOME, you feel it instantly when scrolling through folders, thumbnails and live previews. 🧨

Discovering Yazi (and wanting previews everywhere)

Yazi is a blazing‑fast terminal file manager written in Rust that focuses on speed, async I/O and a clean TUI out of the box. It also supports rich previews of images, PDFs and other documents by using terminal image protocols and helper tools, which is basically catnip for someone used to visual feedback from Windows Explorer.

Fedora 43 installation steps for Yazi:

1. Enable the COPR repo: sudo dnf copr enable lihaohong/yazi
2. Install: sudo dnf install yazi (this pulls recommended dependencies automatically for previews)
   • Or minimal: sudo dnf install yazi --setopt=install_weak_deps=False
3. Configure previews in ~/.config/yazi/yazi.toml as per docs: https://yazi-rs.github.io/docs/image-preview/

Once installed, it only takes a few config tweaks to plug in preview backends and let Yazi render images and documents right next to the file list.

The Ptyxis detour: GNOME‑native, extra friction

Ptyxis looked like a natural partner because it’s a GNOME‑friendly, container‑aware terminal with integration hooks for modern desktop workflows.It is designed to work nicely in GNOME environments,AND comes bundled with Fedora 43 as the default terminal.

Which initially sounded like the right tool for a Yazi‑centric workflow.

In practice, the stack started to feel… layered:

• Terminal (Ptyxis) behaviour and container focus.
• Yazi’s preview backend and image protocol support.
• GNOME integration pieces needed to make everything feel “native.”

That combination turned a fun experiment into “okay, this is starting to feel like debugging a small platform.” Nothing was fundamentally broken, but every tweak added one more place for previews or integration to go sideways. 😅

Ghostty comes back: faster, simpler, less drama

Ghostty had already impressed as a terminal in the earlier testing, but Yazi gave it a chance to really flex.

Ghostty is a fast, feature‑rich, GPU‑accelerated terminal emulator with native UI on each platform, aiming to be both standards‑compliant and modern at the same time.

Relevant Ghostty links and Fedora 43 installation:

• Official site: https://ghostty.org
• Downloads: https://ghostty.org/download
• Docs: https://ghostty.org/docs
• GitHub: https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty

Step-by-step Fedora install:

1. Enable COPR (e.g., scottames or alternateved): sudo dnf copr enable scottames/ghostty (or alternateved/ghostty)
2. Install: sudo dnf install ghostty
3. Log out/in to see it in app menu, or restart shell.

Once Ghostty was back and wired into the Yazi workflow, previews felt instant and scrolling through files suddenly became very “how was I ever doing this in Explorer again?” 🤔

Making Nautilus use Ghostty: nautilus-open-any-terminal

The next step was to make GNOME Files (Nautilus) behave like Windows Explorer’s “Open PowerShell here” or “Open command window here,” but with Ghostty instead of the default terminal. The nautilus-open-any-terminal extension is perfect for this, explicitly supporting Ghostty and dozens of other terminals.

Key links:

• GitHub: https://github.com/Stunkymonkey/nautilus-open-any-terminal
• Fedora COPR: https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/monkeygold/nautilus-open-any-terminal/

Fedora 43 step-by-step:installation

1. Enable COPR: sudo dnf copr enable monkeygold/nautilus-open-any-terminal
2. Install: sudo dnf install nautilus-open-any-terminal
3. Restart Nautilus: nautilus -q
4. Set Ghostty as default: gsettings set com.github.stunkymonkey.nautilus-open-any-terminal terminal ghostty
5. (Optional) Compile schemas if needed: glib-compile-schemas /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/

Now right‑clicking inside a folder shows “Open in Ghostty” (or similar), launching it in that directory reliably. 🎯

Desktop icons: Gtk4 DING fixes the rabbit hole

The desktop itself was the last holdout. The classic Desktop Icons NG (DING) extension has its own idea of how to open a terminal when you click “Open in Terminal” on the desktop.

The older DING codebase didn’t always play nicely with non‑default terminals like Ghostty, especially expecting specific launch contexts.

Key links:

• Gtk4 DING: https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/5263/gtk4-desktop-icons-ng-ding/
• Classic DING: https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/2087/desktop-icons-ng-ding/

The saga and fix:

At first, classic DING led to:

• gsettings tweaks for default terminal (often ignored).
• Wrapper scripts/desktop files to launch Ghostty with correct path/env.
• Failure: Ghostty launches but closes instantly with path error.

Solution – switch to Gtk4 DING:

1. Install via Extensions app or browser integration on https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/5263/gtk4-desktop-icons-ng-ding/
2. Disable/uninstall old DING if installed.
3. Log out and back in.
4. Gtk4 DING auto-detects Ghostty – no wrappers needed!

Why it works: Gtk4 DING is a modern rewrite with better terminal integration, async ops, and GNOME 45+ support (perfect for Fedora 43).

Now desktop “Open in Terminal” launches Ghostty flawlessly.

The payoff

The end result:

So the innocent search for a terminal file manager somehow cleaned up the entire terminal story across the system and quietly confirmed that Ghostty, not Ptyxis, ended up being the “real” default after all.Exactly the kind of ridiculous, over‑engineered journey that any former Windows registry‑tweaker secretly lives for. 😎